


Butterscotch and More Bones

by kaliawai512



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AU of my own fic, Angst, Babybones (Undertale), Brotherly Affection, But never actually did it, Cinnamon Roll Papyrus, Cuddling & Snuggling, Family, Fluff, Gaster was going to torture them, Gen, Goat Mom Is Best Mom, Handplates, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Momplates, Motherly Affection, Past Character Death, Platonic Cuddling, Sans and Papyrus are still innocent, Still emotionally abusive though, Toriel is conflicted, Toriel needs a hug, like momplates and mercyplates rolled into one, zarla-s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-04-08 17:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14110800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaliawai512/pseuds/kaliawai512
Summary: Toriel promised herself she would never leave the Ruins, but she left anyway. Just for a short time. Just long enough to gather supplies. But this time, she leaves a bit earlier, and when she sneaks into the laboratory of one W.D. Gaster, she finds three skeletons instead of two.One old skeleton, who will always be a boy in her eyes, and two little ones, with bright, innocent eyes and hands untouched by metal plates.Based on the "momplates" AU of Zarla's "Handplates" - also an AU of my own fic,Butterscotch and Bones.





	1. Day 1: Found

**Author's Note:**

> Another Handplates fic. What has my life become. XD
> 
> To make a long story quite short, the more recent developments in Handplates, especially the reveal of Gaster and Toriel’s mother-son-esque relationship, has really made me want to explore other possibilities in the Momplates universe. Fact is, when I wrote the original fifty chapters of Butterscotch and Bones, I assumed that Gaster was fond of Toriel, but wasn’t quite that close to her - well, I turned out to be very wrong, and since I have no plans to rewrite Butterscotch, I decided to add on this little … alternate universe.
> 
> The specific situation is based on a conversation I had with CaitieLou, in which we discussed what might have happened if Toriel had discovered Gaster and the brothers before he started outright torturing them. CaitieLou, I blame you.
> 
> Just to be clear, this story is entirely in Toriel's point of view, and as of the beginning of this fic, she has no idea what he was going to do. She holds the same affection for him as she did when he was young. This story does _not_ intend to go "poor Gaster": he still made two children with the intent to torture them, and still emotionally abused them even if he never put in the plates. I just wanted to explore how _Toriel_ might handle the situation if she had found Gaster before he went completely over the deep end.
> 
> If you haven't read Butterscotch and Bones, this will still make sense, don't worry! It's a total AU, so no references to the original fic. :)
> 
> Finally, in homage to the original posting schedule of Butterscotch, I'll be updating on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

She knew it was a poor decision, from the moment she made it.

But she had still made it, and she was still going through with it, and right now, she really didn’t care what that said about her mental state.

Because Gaster was standing five feet away from her.

She knew, logically, that he had not changed all that much in the past decades. How many years had it been? Had it been a century yet? She couldn’t remember. But he had been fully grown for several centuries now, she _knew_ he wouldn’t change any more.

Yet … he had.

He looked … older. Much, much older, even though she couldn’t pick out a logical reason _why._ She had been waiting in the lower parts of the lab for hours, since she arrived late the night before, hoping that this was still where he worked. And her patience had been rewarded when he stepped out of the elevator, his favorite white coat hanging over his shoulders, looking so grown-up, so … worn, yet at the same time, so similar to that boy she had found shivering on the battlefield.

For a moment, just a moment, she forgot about the cloaking spell she had placed over herself and started to walk over to pull him into a hug.

Then he walked straight past her, mere inches from brushing into her side, and her shoulders fell.

No. He couldn’t see her. She couldn’t _let_ him see her. She couldn’t let anyone see her.

That part of her life was over. Everyone she had left … she could never go back to them now.

No matter how strong the temptation might be.

But she could still allow herself the pleasure of seeing an old friend once again.

No matter how much he grew, no matter how distant he became, to her, he would always be like a son.

She followed him down the hall, staying a fair distance away even as he turned sharp corners with practiced ease. He put his hand to an electronic pad on the wall, and a door slid open, and she barely made it inside before it closed behind him.

Yes. This was a very poor decision. After all, she didn’t know if she would be able to leave until he left. She might have to stay here all day.

Yet … a day watching him, seeing how he was doing, did not seem particularly wasted, when she thought about it.

She wondered what new projects he had taken up now. He always seemed to have one going, before she had left. The Core, of course, but there were dozens of others, advancements and discoveries that made his face light up in the closest to genuine glee she ever saw. He didn’t seem particularly happy at the moment, more … deep in thought, but he got like that sometimes. Perhaps he was trying to work through a new problem.

She glanced into the rooms as she passed them, and found herself trying to figure out what he was doing by glimpses alone. She was fairly sure this part of the lab hadn’t been there when she had visited last. But he had always been rather cramped in his workspace before, and with a new project underway, he would likely need the extra room.

He walked just as easily here as he did outside. Apparently this extra space had been here for a while. And it didn’t sound like there was anyone else working here. Gaster had always preferred his solitude, but this seemed a bit much, especially if it was just him …

He turned one last corner, and this time, instead of the usual open doorways lining the walls, she saw a single doorway on just one side. A large doorway, like an entire room, with a blue glow emanating from inside.

Beams. Energy beams. She had seen those before, in some of the puzzles around Hotland. They were fairly dangerous. She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from asking out loud why he would need something like that down here. But he was slowing down now, his head turning toward the beams as he came to a stop. Toriel slowed her own pace, keeping a few yards away to avoid the risk of him sensing her despite her spell. He turned toward the beams, looking at what was beyond them, and Toriel crept a little closer, very careful, trying to peer inside without catching his attention.

Then, just before she got close enough to catch a glimpse, she heard a voice.

A high-pitched voice.

A _child’s_ voice.

Coming from behind the beams.

For a few seconds, she was too stunned to even think. Because that … that couldn’t be happening. Why would there be … that didn’t make … this was a _lab,_ and those were … those beams were _dangerous,_ she had long disabled all of those in the Ruins, but …

The child’s voice stopped.

Only for another, quieter voice to sound right after.

She couldn’t understand it. It sounded like gibberish, babbling, it sounded like …

It sounded like how Gaster talked.

She moved before she could think, taking another step forward and peering into the room, behind the beams. It was almost empty, save for a bench by the wall. And the two children standing near the center of the room.

Two _skeleton_ children.

One tall, one short, both of them dressed in green medical gowns, clutching each other’s hands, staring at Gaster as the tall one babbled on in Gaster’s own incomprehensible font.

She didn’t notice her cloaking magic had fallen until Gaster jerked around to face her.

His hand was up before she had the chance to blink, blue magic gripping at her soul as his other hand summoned bones into the air, ready to slam into her. For a second, she remained frozen, caught off guard. But she had been in far, far too many situations where her life was threatened to let shock or fear stop her. Even if it had been centuries since she had last felt the weight of blue magic holding her down.

Her own hand rose, and as the bones flew toward her, her fire magic flickered to life and turned each one to dust. She readied herself for another attack, already forming the flames in her palms.

But no attack came.

Gaster stood there, motionless, his hand still in the hair, his good eye wide and his mouth parted in shock. His eyes glowed, flickering through several different colors too fast for her to recognize before they went dark again, and he was left staring at her, frozen, trembling. Like he was looking at a pile of dust that had reformed and come back to life.

Toriel pursed her lips.

“Gaster.”

He flinched, as if his own name had struck him. She reached out a hand and shifted forward, and he stumbled back, holding his hands close to his torso in a sad semblance of defense. Toriel swallowed hard.

“Gaster. It’s me,” she said, carefully, staying where she was but leaving her hands in the air, ready to catch him in case he fell over. He shuddered, and her eyes softened. “Gaster. My child …”

She trailed off, staring at him with the same gentle eyes she had worn every time he had a meltdown, every time the stress he piled on himself finally became too much. He shook his head, his bones clicking as his gaze remained locked on her. Slowly, his hands began to move, forming signs she couldn’t have missed even if she hadn’t been paying such close attention.

_You’re alive …_

Her breath caught in her throat, and it took all she had not to rush forward and pull him into a hug.

But two sets of eyes were still staring at them from behind the beams, and she found her head turning to face them, even as Gaster continued to stare at her.

The skeletons were just as small, just as young, as she had suspected at first glance. She wasn’t sure of their age, it was difficult to tell with skeletons, but they were definitely children. Young children, no older than eight or ten, and likely quite a bit younger. They were tall enough to be close to their teens, but the way they looked at her, wide-eyed, curious, reminded her of Asriel as a toddler.

And yes, they were definitely wearing medical gowns. No pants, no shoes, and no toys for entertainment or blankets or pillows for comfort. Just two children in an almost empty room, with nothing but each other.

Alone. In a _lab._

Toriel turned to Gaster again, her eyes not quite as soft as before.

“Gaster, what are these children doing here?”

Silence. More staring. She wasn’t even sure if he had heard her speak.

“Are they yours?” she went on, gesturing toward the boys to get his attention in case her voice failed to reach him. He blinked, a small but definite form of acknowledgment, but still said nothing. Toriel pressed her lips together. “Gaster. Gaster, I need you to answer me.”

He didn’t respond. And he wasn’t going to, by the looks of it. There was still that blank shock, that lost, confused look, but she could also see the telltale signs of him clamming up. Like he did when he didn’t want to talk about something. When he didn’t know _how_ to talk about something.

He just kept staring, his good eye wide, his mouth hanging open.

He wasn’t going to answer, and in any other situation, that would have been alright. She could have dealt with that. His comfort was more important to her than any question that needed answering.

But not this one.

This time, there were children involved. And as much as she would always look at Gaster as that boy she had found on the battlefield … as much as he would always be small and vulnerable in her eyes … she knew he was far from being a child.

She couldn’t force him to answer, not here, not now, but she couldn’t let this go without a response.

And as soon as she recognized both those facts, her mouth opened without even a thought.

“Come with me.”

The words shocked her almost as much as they shocked him. His browbone rose, and it looked like he was seeing her for the first time all over again, taking her in, trying to figure out whether any of this was real.

_What?_

The sign was small, vague, hesitant, but she understood it easily. She didn’t respond at first, still running her own words over in her head, trying to figure out what she had been thinking to even suggest it.

But the more she thought about it, the less she could let the idea go. It was silly, it was ridiculous, but … maybe it wasn’t.

This was … she didn’t even know what to make of this. These were … these were skeletons, and there were no other skeletons in existence, these were two skeleton children who had definitely not been here before she left which means Gaster had …

But … that wasn’t right. If he had … if these were his … then why were they in a lab? Why were they dressed in medical gowns, why were they in an empty room blocked off by dangerous beams? Gaster had never been particularly good with children, but …

This didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense and she didn’t know how to process it and she …

She had to deal with this. She couldn’t leave them until she figured this out.

But she also couldn’t stay here. The longer she stayed here, out in the open, the higher the chances that someone would wander in and find her. And even though she had already exposed herself to one person, she wasn’t going to end decades of hiding and risk someone breaking into the one sanctuary she—and every human who fell down—had left.

She held herself a little taller and much more assured.

“Come with me,” she repeated, turning to look into the room, past the beams, then to Gaster again. “All of you.”

He kept staring, silent, but slowly, his head began to shake, still disbelieving, lost and confused. His hands raised again.

_I … I can’t …_

Toriel’s brow set, her eyes firm.

“Gaster. Come with me.”

It was the closest thing to an order she had ever given him, more firmly than she had spoken to him in all his life. She didn’t like to use that tone with anyone she thought of as her child. But Gaster wasn’t a child anymore, no matter how she saw him. And if she had to use that voice to assure the safety of two monsters who still _were_ children, then she would.

Even still, from the look on Gaster’s face, she didn’t even need to use that tone to assure that he complied with her request.

It was clear, looking at him now, that he never could have refused her in the first place.

He pressed his mouth into a tight, shaky line, looking back at her with a face that reminded her painfully of the boy he had been centuries ago, the boy who had lost everything, the boy who clung to her as the only stability he had left.

Then he turned and placed his hand on the electric pad on the wall.

Three tiny bulbs lit up, and the beams disappeared.

The children remained there, in the middle of the room, looking back and forth between her and Gaster, as if they weren’t sure what to do. But when Gaster motioned for them to come closer, they did, clutching each other’s hands tight as they walked to his side.

Gaster looked at her, his good eye wide and pained. Toriel stared back, not even sure what she wanted her face to look like.

Then she turned around and started back down the hall, and a second later, she heard the tapping of three sets of feet following close behind her.


	2. Day 1.5: Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Dang_. Uh, wow. Thank you, everyone. I am ... very flattered. O.O
> 
> A quick note for this chapter: Toriel does not know what Gaster has done or what he was going to do. At the moment, she's assuming the best, because she still loves him and views him as her grown child, and her mind doesn't even begin to go toward the truth. For now, at least.
> 
> As for Gaster ... well. I figure that if anyone can bring out certain sides of him, it's Toriel.
> 
> Also, I forgot to mention that many aspects of this story are inspired by the incredible [Gaster Ghost](http://www.drdowasure.com/gaster/). If you don't have him, please go check him out. He's amazing.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy. ;)

The journey home was … very long.

She was quite experienced with cloaking magic, but even the best cloaking magic had limitations—otherwise it would have been of far greater use during the War. She could only cloak herself, and only for short periods of time. Cloaking Gaster and two little skeletons was completely out of the question, and as far as she knew, Gaster had never learned that type of magic. If he had, she had no doubt he would have done it already.

Even with cloaking magic, she preferred to travel at night, but she was impatient, desperate to understand what was going on, and she knew she couldn’t focus on that until they were back somewhere safe. So the only choice was to travel during the day.

There was no plan. No time taken to discuss what they were going to do. Toriel didn’t even think about whether this was really the best course of action.

But her instincts had never been wrong before, and she knew, looking at Gaster, looking at those two children, that she had to step in, even if she didn’t fully understand why.

That was … much less of a reassurance than she would have hoped it would be, once they left the lab and started on their way.

The children seemed … confused as they walked through the outer parts of the lab, and even more confused once they walked out into Hotland, looking around and clinging to each other’s hands as if they had never seen it before. Gaster spoke to them, briefly, when they left, but after that all he did was keep a close eye on them to assure they didn’t wander off. When they did, he gripped their souls with blue magic and tugged them back—a little more sharply than she really thought was necessary.

She wanted to say something, but she didn’t trust her voice not to fail at her at the moment.

Besides, it took enough of her focus just to avoid being seen.

Traveling through Waterfall wasn’t very bad. It was still sparsely populated, and it was easy to avoid people by ducking around corners and into the plant life. Gaster, oddly enough, seemed just as intent on keeping hidden as she did, tugging the children into hiding right along with them, even if he had been ignoring them for the past ten minutes. The boys murmured to each other, pointing and staring, and the smaller one, despite his permanent smile, seemed irritated, but neither of them looked bothered by being ignored or even moved around without permission or warning.

Yet another thing she was going to have to figure out.

Once they were safe. She would figure it out once they were safe.

Snowdin was more difficult than Waterfall. There were less places to hide once they reached the town, and they spent more time slipping behind walls, keeping just out of sight, than they did actually traveling. If possible, the children were even more fascinated by their surroundings this time, pausing regularly to pick up handfuls of snow and let it slip between their fingers, throwing little bits at each other’s faces and giggling as they went. Despite everything, Toriel found herself smiling.

Gaster … Gaster just looked uncomfortable.

Once they passed through the town and reached the forest leading toward the Ruins, she found herself thinking that this was it. She was revealing herself, revealing her home, revealing the place she had kept secret for decades. Once Gaster stepped through that Door, her secret would be lost forever. She shook that thought away without a second’s pause.

She had left the Underground because she felt there was nothing she could do.

Now there was. And if she didn’t do it, if she threw away the one chance to help someone, after _so many times_ of trying and failing and losing those she loved …

She would never be able to live with herself.

And if there was one thing she knew she had to hold tight to, after decades on her own, it was the ability to live with the choices she made.

So when the Door finally came into sight, she didn’t hesitate. She removed the magical lock she had placed on it when she left, pulled the Door open, and watched as her three guests walked inside.

She could see the realization flash across Gaster’s face, the knowledge that she had been here this whole time. She wondered whether he had looked for her. Whether he had looked here before, or whether he had completely overlooked it. What he had thought had happened to her.

For the first time in a long time, she wondered whether she shouldn’t have left him some sort of goodbye.

But it was too late for that now.

She pulled the Door shut and led them through the hall, up into her house.

It felt both infinitely familiar and infinitely strange to hear footsteps following her up the stairs into her home. How long had it been since the last child had been here? How long had it been since they had …? No. No, she wasn’t going to think about that now. She could think about that later, after … after she had figured out what she was going to do about this.

They followed her into the house, and as she stepped up to the main floor, she couldn’t help but pause and take a deep, almost relieved breath at being Home. It was nice to get out sometimes, to see something other than the Ruins, but after so many decades … she just felt more comfortable here.

Even if it wasn’t quite the same.

She started down the hall, glancing behind her to see the three of them following, as silent as always. Gaster looked around as he walked, and she could practically hear his mind working, remembering all the little details from when he had spent most of his time here. He had been living independently for centuries, but … now, at least for her, it didn’t feel like quite so long.

She paused in front of the first bedroom door and turned around to face them. Three sets of eyes watched her, wide, curious, expectant. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, and Gaster looked at her with an expression she didn’t know how to respond to.

It was sad. Pained. Lost. Like that boy she had found on the battlefield, scared and confused and broken.

She would deal with that soon.

But now …

She turned to the two boys, looking up at her with that same wide-eyed wonder. She gave them a gentle, careful smile and led them into the bedroom, flicking on the light as she went. They lingered in the doorway, glancing from side to side, as she pulled back the covers of the bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she took in their gowns—were those really _medical_ gowns?—and tried to decide whether the sweaters and pants she kept in the dresser would fit them. Most likely. They looked about the right size, and it would do until she could make them their own clothes, at least.

Even though she stood near the opposite wall, both of them remained in the doorway, staring at her as if through a window, neither of their toes quite touching where the door would be. Toriel frowned, then forced a small smile and motioned toward them. They glanced at each other, then back to her. She motioned again, and after another moment’s hesitation, they walked over to her, the tall one first, the little one trailing a bit behind him, their hands still clasped together.

They looked around the room just as curiously as they had everything else. They stayed side by side, never letting go of each other, but now that they weren’t forced to move quickly from place to place, they finally got the chance to take in their surroundings, and did so with a wide-eyed eagerness she hadn’t seen for …

Well. It had been some time.

They pointed at things they saw, chattering a little louder than they had dared on the trip over here, clearly asking questions and making observations, each of them guiding the other into a new discovery. Once or twice, they tried to ask her something and looked confused, though not offended, when she didn’t respond. They looked, oddly enough, as if they were used to not having their questions answered. Which she supposed made sense—Gaster tended to find explaining things tedious if he didn’t think the person could understand, and she knew he could often get so lost in his own mind that he ignored those around him.

She had just never thought he would be spending time around children, who would be ignored just the same.

She slipped past Gaster in the hall and went to the kitchen to get them some food—given how early it had been when she found them in the lab, they likely hadn’t eaten all day, but they hadn’t complained. Still, when she set the plate of finger-food down in front of them, they dug into it so ravenously that she might have thought they hadn’t eaten in days.

Of course, she _had_ included some desserts on the plate, and they did seem more interested in those than the vegetables.

After they were finished, she got to work dressing them, which was far more … interesting than she had expected. At first, she simply handed them each a set of pajamas from the dresser, but all they did was hold them up at various angles, squint at them, and try to stick their heads through the legs of the pants. So finally, she gently took the pajamas back, helped them out of their gowns, and guided them into the shirts and the pants.

They didn’t seem uncomfortable being undressed or dressed. Perhaps Gaster had always done it for them and had just never bothered to teach them how to do so themselves.

She stood back for a minute after that and let them get used to the feeling of the fabric against their bones. They ran their hands over their own clothes, then over each other’s, babbling along all the while, eager and intrigued.

Well. She knew it wasn’t actually babbling, even if she couldn’t understand it. Their voices were … different than Gaster’s, but she was fairly sure it was Gaster’s font they were speaking. Still, Gaster could certainly understand her, even if he couldn’t speak back in the same way. Perhaps …

She licked her lips, paused, then opened her mouth.

“Can you understand me?”

They paused and turned to her, both of them wide-eyed. Neither of them replied. She gave them a hopeful smile.

“My name is Toriel. What are yours?”

They kept staring, as blankly as before. She gave them a few seconds, just in case they were nervous, but still, nothing. Finally, she sighed, but did her best to keep smiling.

“I see … well. We can figure out a way to communicate later,” she said. She bent down a little to be closer to their height. “For now, I want you to know that I will not harm you. You’re safe here. Everything will be fine. I’m just going to talk to your … to … I’m just going to talk to him for a little while. Why don’t you two get some sleep, and tomorrow I’ll show you around the Ruins?”

She knew they couldn’t understand her. If they indeed only spoke Gaster’s font, then of course they wouldn’t know a word of what she said. But she had spoken to Asriel, explaining what she was doing at any given moment, long before he understood her. She believed, very firmly, that even the youngest of children understood facial expressions and vocal intonations, and the same applied to someone who didn’t speak the same language.

And indeed, as they stared up at her, wide-eyed, they looked a bit less lost than before. Still confused, but more … secure, perhaps.

Oddly enough, they hadn’t seemed afraid of her at all before. Even though she was a stranger. Even though she had taken them somewhere new.

They were simply … curious. Innocent. Fascinated by the world around them.

Fascinated by her. As if they had never seen someone like her before.

And she supposed that was likely, there was only one other boss monster in the Underground, but still …

They didn’t look harmed, or sick, or injured, but that did very little to soothe her concern. She had known many different children, from many different circumstances, and she had never seen behavior quite like this. And that wasn’t even to speak of that room she had found them in …

She pushed the thoughts aside for the moment, though. Another thing to ask Gaster. For the moment, she turned her attention to the toy box sitting at the foot of the bed. She approached it, and found the boys’ attention locked on her already as they followed her across the room.

“Here are some toys you can play with,” she explained, opening the lid of the box and gesturing inside. “And the bed’s ready when you get sleepy. Do try not to stay up too late, though. It’s been a long day, and I imagine you’re very tired.”

They stared at the toys with the same wide eyes, and she swore she saw something sparkle within them. But they looked back to her a second later, as if she were still the most interesting thing in the room. Or perhaps they just weren’t comfortable playing with a stranger around, a stranger who had taken them away from what she presumed to be their home—however unfit that home may have been.

She didn’t want to leave them alone. She wasn’t sure why. She knew this room was safe, so many children had lived in it and … well. Maybe that was why she didn’t want to leave them alone. If she could see them, at least she knew that they wouldn’t get hurt.

But she had a conversation to have. A very important conversation that she couldn’t put off any longer.

So despite all her instincts screaming at her to stay, she gave them a soft smile, said goodnight, and turned around to leave.

Then one of them spoke.

Toriel couldn’t understand a word of it, of course, but she still turned, her head tilted. The tall one was fidgeting, glancing between her and the small one. Finally, he took a careful step toward her, holding out his arms in a gesture universal to every mother in existence. Toriel’s eyes softened, and her mouth curled into a smile.

She held out her arms in return.

The tall one’s face lit up, and he all but sprinted across the room and rammed into her, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing tight.

“Tight” for him wasn’t very tight as all for her, but she still chuckled and held him back as firmly as she could without hurting him. He made a soft, content humming sound, pressing closer still. He hugged her like he hadn’t gotten a hug in days, weeks. Ever.

She knew Gaster was far from an affectionate monster by nature, but …

She brushed the thought aside and focused on the child in her arms, holding him with as much affection as she could—not a difficult task, as both of them had already endeared themselves to her. She rubbed her hand up and down his spine, stroked her hand over his head, and she swore she saw his closed eyes flickering green.

When he finally pulled back, he looked up at her with such unbridled contentment that it almost hurt to look at. His eyesockets also seemed to be drooping more than before, and the tension in his shoulders she had barely noticed before had disappeared. A couple of yards away, his brother looked curious, a little unsure, but just as tired as him.

Toriel smiled again and guided both of them toward the bed, patting the mattress until they both climbed up. She coaxed them to lie down, then pulled the blankets up to cover them. Both of them gave her—and the blankets—confused looks, as if this were somehow strange to them, but they settled quickly, the small one shifting over to rest his head on the tall one’s chest while the tall one wrapped his arms around him in return.

On an impulse she had almost forgotten, she reached down and stroked their little heads. They didn’t have any hair to smooth down, but it seemed to soothe them both nonetheless, their mouths curling into smiles and their eyes falling shut as they cuddled closer together still.

She could have stood there and watched them all night, but she knew she couldn’t. So she stepped away from the bed, flicked off the lamp, and crossed the room to the door. She peered inside as she pulled it shut, catching a faint glimpse of them snuggled in bed, their eyes glowing just enough for her to make out. The door clicked shut, and she rested a hand on the wood. She swore she could feel their tiny souls humming on the other side.

Skeletons. Two tiny, living skeletons. Two skeleton _children._

Despite her overwhelming worry, the questions she still needed answered, she couldn’t help but feel like the world had granted them a miracle.

She let out a long breath and turned around.

And there was Gaster.

Standing there, maybe five feet away, his arms clutched close to his body while his eyes locked on her as if he feared that she might disappear the second he looked away.

Now that she thought about it, he had been looking at her like that since the lab. She just hadn’t been paying attention. She had to get back to the Ruins, she had to get out of sight, she had to know more about these children, to know how Gaster had gotten them, what they were doing in that empty cell, why were they dressed in medical gowns, _why hadn’t he signed their names_ —

But here he was, just staring at her, just like that lost boy she had taken in after the rest of his race had been turned to dust.

And she could already feel those questions falling to the back of her mind.

They wouldn’t stay there for long, she knew. She needed to know, and she was going to find out. But standing here in the hall, looking at him while he stared at her with such pain in his own good eye …

Toriel let out a long, heavy breath, then straightened and looked to him again.

“Would you like a slice of pie?”

Gaster blinked. Then he blinked again, and again, to the point that it looked more like his eye was twitching. He kept staring at her, frozen, his expression shifting between emotions too fast for her to read.

She took that as a yes.

He followed her into the kitchen like a puppy might follow their favorite person. The pie she had left was rather old, but she doubted it would make a difference. And indeed, when she cut a generous slice, plated it, and set it down in front of Gaster on the table, he looked at it like it was the most wonderful thing he had seen in years.

Well. Perhaps the second most wonderful thing, if the looks he kept giving her were any indication.

She didn’t get a slice for herself. She hadn’t eaten all day either, but … she didn’t have much of an appetite, so she just sat down across from him and motioned for him to go ahead.

It took him a few more seconds, but he had never been able to resist her pie, and sure enough, he picked up the fork and began eating, though far more slowly than he had before. As if he were savoring it. As if he were afraid he would never taste it again.

Toriel sighed, and Gaster jerked his head back to face her, his eyes wide, his teeth still closed in mid-chew. She paused, giving him a moment to finish chewing and swallow. He set down his fork and lowered his eyes to the table, quiet, distant, like a child fearing judgment but doing his best to pretend he was unaffected.

She sat up a little taller in her chair, but kept her gaze as gentle as he could.

“I suppose you know what I want to ask.”

Gaster didn’t respond. His shoulders hunched a little further, and he stared down at his slice of pie like he hoped it might come to life and swallow him whole.

Toriel licked her lips.

“There … there aren’t any other skeletons,” she said, carefully, because she knew it still hurt him to remember it. “How did you …?”

Still, Gaster said nothing. But he shifted, bringing his hands a little closer to the plate. And for the first time since he had stepped out of the elevator, she looked at them.

And found two large holes where his palms had once been.

She almost choked on her next inhale, but managed to stifle her gasp.

Gaster glanced up at her, apparently just long enough to see where her eyes had landed. He tensed, and looked like he wanted to yank his hands down into his lap, but he resisted, just lowering his head again.

Suddenly the pieces began to fit together. One by one, they clicked, until Toriel found the pile of mismatched puzzle pieces beginning to form a picture.

“Oh my child …” she breathed.

He tensed a little further, but still said nothing.

Toriel allowed herself a few moments to compose herself, to let the knowledge of it sink in. She tried, tried very, _very_ hard, not to imagine how he had done it. But she had witnessed far too much violence during her life to not have at least a small idea, and she knew that even the imagined memory would remain engraved in her head for the rest of her life.

Finally, she looked at him again, shoving her own reactions aside and focusing on the answers she still needed to get.

“Gaster …” she began, carefully. “If those are your children … then what were they doing in that …”

She trailed off again, trying to find a word for it. Trying to find a single word that could describe her utter bafflement at seeing two small children alone in an empty room, dressed in what looked like medical gowns, with only a bench on the wall. Did Gaster really think that was an acceptable place to leave children? Did Gaster really think it was alright to leave children alone?

She had come in during the morning, and he had arrived a while after her … had they been there all night?

Gaster still said nothing, but he was fidgeting now, clearly uncomfortable, apparently unsure how to respond himself. She gave him a little longer, but still, silence. She sighed again.

“Will you tell me their names?”

He flinched, a full-body, jolting flinch, and lowered his head further. She opened her mouth to prompt him again, it was a simple question, such a simple question, surely he could at least answer _that_ —

Then she noticed that he was crying.

He was good at hiding it. Very, very good at hiding it. But she had known him long enough to know the signs no matter how hard he tried to conceal them. His teeth clenched and his eyes squeezed shut, his head hung so low she had to tilt her head to make out the parts of his face he kept hidden.

His shoulders trembled, and his hands clenched so tight she worried he was going to snap off his fingers.

“Gaster?” she asked, gently, carefully, like she had all those other times he had found himself in the midst of a bad memory, unable to fully escape.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t respond at all. He shivered and lowered his head further, and Toriel nudged her tea aside and leaned forward on the table.

“Gaster, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head, but still didn’t speak, just curling up tighter and shaking harder. She hesitated a moment, but only a moment. Then she pushed herself out of her chair, walked around the table, and pulled him into a hug.

He resisted at first, but he had always resisted, he had always tensed up and tried to pull away, and she had never let him. She didn’t now. She held him gently, but still firmly, and after a few seconds he gave up and went limp in her arms. She held him tighter, and slowly his hands came up to grip at her robes, clinging to her as if he were afraid she would disappear. He bit back most of his sobs and muffled the rest against her robes, and she rubbed her hand over his spine, making soft shushing noises like she had when he was young.

“It’s alright. It’s alright, I’m here. I’m here now, everything’s going to be fine,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of his skull.

His breath hitched, and he held tighter. Toriel pursed her lips and swallowed the growing lump in her throat, but she didn’t let him go. She held him as if to make up for the decades past, to soothe pains she would never fully understand, to express what words would never be able to convey.

“Everything’s going to be fine.”


	3. Day 5: Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, everyone, thank you. I'm so flattered that you're enjoying this.
> 
> Just as before, Toriel doesn't know much yet. And she's getting a lot more questions before she gets any answers ...

The children—the boys, she should say—adjusted quickly.

Even though they couldn’t understand her, and she couldn’t understand them, they were quick learners, and both very eager whenever she showed them something new. They followed her around throughout the day, watching her cook, sitting on the floor while she knitted or read, or just standing there, listening and occasionally babbling back when she talked to them.

She knew it wasn’t babbling. She knew it was a language, just as real as her own. But no matter how many times she asked, Gaster refused to translate all but the most essential.

After three days, he still hadn’t told her their names.

She asked once more, but left it alone after that. Gaster hadn’t been very talkative in any way recently. He had calmed down after a while that first evening, and gone to bed on a cot she made up without a word. When he woke up the next morning, he had apparently retreated back into that shell, though she still caught him looking at her with sad, longing eyes when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.

She knew there was no point trying to get anything out of him when he was like that.

He paid very little attention to the boys, and didn’t seem to mind—or really care at all—what she did with them. She swore she saw him flinch when they walked out of their bedroom the next morning wearing striped sweaters, but she supposed that made sense, given that the last two people he had seen wearing those clothes had been … well.

The boys remained just as wide-eyed and curious as they had been when they first arrived. The tall one was a good deal more energetic than the small one—he fell asleep at an almost alarming frequency, though his brother didn’t seem surprised by the behavior—but even the small one was just as bright when he was awake. They looked at everything in her house like they had never seen anything like it before. Granted, Toriel hadn’t been to Gaster’s house in decades, and it had already been an incorrigible mess the last time she was there … but it was still strange. Strange that they stared at the mixing bowls and broom and whisk and even old pots and pans as if they were the greatest mystery in the universe. Strange that they bounced on her armchair and their bed like they had never felt something so soft.

Strange that they continued to pat their clothes and pick at the fabric, as if they had never felt anything like it before.

She had confronted Gaster once, about why they had been in that room when she had found them. He had been … reluctant to say anything at first. Uncomfortable. Just like he was at most of her other questions. But she pressed, not letting it go, not letting him slip away from this one. The memory of it kept coming back to her. Certainly, she was more … particular in her standards for the care of children than some other monsters, but just about any monster she had met would agree that an empty room like that wasn’t an acceptable place to leave children for any period of time.

He told her, at last, that they “had” to be in that room. That it was where they stayed when he worked.

He didn’t say anything else, but Gaster had always been either a man of few words or a man of far too many. So she supposed that made sense.

Though she would have to make it very clear to him that just because he was working, that didn’t mean it was alright to leave two children alone all day in an empty room.

But the more time passed, the more she began to think that leaving them in an empty room—even one that was guarded by dangerous beams—was the least of her concerns.

Not only did he not translate for them, but he spoke to them very little. They tried to speak to him—the tall one especially—but he either gave brief answers that she couldn’t understand or ignored them entirely. The tall one repeated himself sometimes, or followed Gaster around, trying to get a response, but gave up more quickly than most children, looking disappointed, but not surprised.

He didn’t touch them very much either, and seemed to actively avoid it if he could. Once or twice, he used blue magic to move them around, though he seemed … oddly hesitant to do so when she was around.

In any other case, she would have been confused. Skeletons had used blue magic to help carry their children, especially to move them out of the way of danger, for generations.

But it had also always been used gently, lovingly, and the way Gaster did it …

He wasn’t hurting them, but she certainly wouldn’t have called it “kind.”

Perhaps the lack of touch was what made them so desperate for contact with her. Both of them seemed … a bit uncertain at first about asking for attention, but after the first day, once she had made it clear that she would give it to them as often as they wished, they never seemed to want to leave her side. The tall one hugged her often, and the small one, though shier, sometimes leaned against her side and closed his eyes, like he might settle into a nap standing up.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that she first picked them up.

It was reflex, an old instinct she had almost forgotten. The tall one was wandering a little too close to a dangerous puzzle, moving too fast for her to try to get her message across verbally. So she grabbed him, as gently as she could, under his arms, and swept him up off the ground, settling him on her hip before she began to point toward the puzzle, showing him the danger.

But he wasn’t looking at the puzzle. He was looking at her.

At her arms around him.

For a few seconds, he just seemed surprised. Uncertain. Then he shifted a little in her grip and leaned closer to her, and his expression settled into something like contentment. He slipped his arms around her neck and rested his head on her shoulder, letting his eyes drift shut.

She didn’t set him back down until nearly half an hour after they got back to the house.

When Gaster walked into the living room to see her holding him as she plucked a book off the shelf, he stood frozen, gawking with his good eye wide open, before turning around and leaving the room as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.

It made him … uncomfortable, apparently, to see her show them affection.

It was … odd, but like everything else, it made sense once she thought about it. She remembered how hesitant he had been to receive affection when she first found him, how he seemed to think it was inappropriate or weak to be cuddled and held or even to just get a hug. Even when she had gotten him used to it, he still viewed it with caution, and he still seemed to believe that stuffing his emotions and pretending that he didn’t need affection or care indicated some twisted sort of strength.

Perhaps he had been raising them with that philosophy. It was fairly common, in her experience, for monsters to repeat the mistakes of their upbringing when raising their own children.

But that didn’t mean she was going to allow it to continue.

Perhaps she couldn’t convince Gaster to show them affection—for the time being, at least—but she could certainly fill the gap he had left.

And as uncomfortable as Gaster looked when he saw her petting their skulls or holding them, he never complained out loud, and he never tried to stop her.

He didn’t try to interfere in any respect, for that matter. He looked … resigned, hesitant, reluctant, but accepting. As if he knew there was no point in stepping in. She couldn’t decide whether that indicated that he deferred to her judgment when it came to children, or whether he just didn’t care what she did with them at all.

She hoped it was the former.

On the fifth day, after lunch was eaten and the dishes put away, she left the boys in the living room with some of their toys while she started a pie. They had already finished two in the time they had been here, but they were young and growing and looked at the pie as if it were the most glorious bounty they had ever seen, and she couldn’t deny them a small pleasure like that when it was so easy for her to provide.

Even when she was entirely engrossed in her work, she still heard the faint shuffling of Gaster’s shoes as he slipped into the kitchen behind her. She smiled at him, and he fidgeted under her gaze, but said nothing. She returned to her work, but kept her ears perked, turning to him once every minute or so in case he had finally decided what he wanted to say.

In the end, the only warning she had to turn her head again was a clearing of his throat.

_Their fonts are Comic Sans and Papyrus._

She almost didn’t catch the signs when he made them. It had been a long time since she had been around someone who spoke only in sign. But she _did_ catch it, and still she furrowed her brow, processing the words as they translated themselves in her head.

“I see.” She paused. “But … if those are their fonts, then why do they sound …?”

She trailed off. Gaster’s eyes lowered to the floor in front of him, his mouth pressed together into a tight, awkward line. His magic hands hesitated.

_They’ve only ever been exposed to my font, so they’ve learned to mimic it._

Toriel bit back a sigh. It seemed like every time she got an answer, she also got three new questions. But it was still an answer: an answer after almost a week without any. And now that she took the time to think about it, it was a very important answer.

Their names.

She didn’t understand, couldn’t begin to comprehend, why it had taken him so long to tell her. But he _had_ told her, and she supposed that was what mattered.

“I understand,” she said at last. Gaster looked up at her, just as Toriel managed to push a smile onto her lips. “Well. I think they’ve already picked up a few words from me. It shouldn’t be too hard to teach them a second language, don’t you think?”

Gaster just stared back at her, silent as ever. Toriel’s eyes drifted toward the entrance to the kitchen, toward the living room, where the boys were likely still on the floor, playing with one of their toys.

“Comic Sans and Papyrus,” she repeated, with all the fondness that the names deserved.

She looked back to Gaster and smiled, and she swore Gaster’s good eye flickered a nervous pink before he jerked his head away.


	4. Day 23: Touch

Papyrus’s first word in Common—Gaster’s name for the way she spoke—was “UP.”

Perhaps because it was easy for him to stay. Perhaps because she tried to narrate what she was doing as she did it, to help him learn new words, and the word was fairly common.

But she knew the real reason was that he realized that when he said “UP,” he got to be held.

And Papyrus loved being held.

She was starting to believe that Gaster had never picked either of them up in his arms, rather than with blue magic, because both of them reacted with that same wonder, curiosity, and—eventually—contentment when she began carrying them around. Papyrus was first, of course, but once his brother discovered it, she started to wonder whether she would ever be able to go five minutes without him in her arms.

Oddly enough, his first word was “pie” rather than “up,” but given the amount of pie he ate, she supposed that made sense, too.

They learned their names fairly quickly, too, even though they didn’t say them. She supposed that their names must sound different in Gaster’s font, because they didn’t recognize them at first, but they were bright, and they soon picked up on how often she used those words around them. Papyrus’s name was his second word, and when Comic Sans finally said his name—his tenth word—he shortened it to “sans.”

At first, Toriel thought he might start using the full thing once he got used to it, but he clearly preferred the shortened version, and soon, she began using it as well.

She had planned out a vague curriculum in her head for teaching the boys Common, but she never got around to using it. They picked up things easily enough on their own, or with a bit of guidance if a word was more abstract. When she asked Gaster, he said that they had started learning to read, but neither of them had done very much work in it, but Sans, she found, was quick to pick up the alphabet when she presented it to him. She had a few easy readers lying around and he tore his way through them in mere days, quickly moving on to more advanced material. Papyrus was much less interested in reading, but no less bright and curious: his learning style was more involved, more hands-on, and when Sans started reading about an idea, Toriel took the time to show Papyrus how it played out in the real world.

She got the strong impression that no one had taken the time to do that for him before, and given how absorbed in his own world Gaster had been when he was young, she couldn’t say she was surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

They were both eager and enthusiastic about the world around them, about the Ruins, about her home and everything in it, but no matter how many new things they discovered, their favorite thing continued to be time spent with her.

Especially if that time involved some form of physical affection.

It didn’t matter what it was. Everything seemed new to them: new and infinitely needed. Everything that she had taken for granted when raising Asriel, everything that came so naturally to her but she knew was more foreign to Gaster. She gave it willingly and frequently, and still, they actively sought it out, and their contentment on receiving it never seemed to decrease no matter how much time passed by.

After the first two weeks, their eyes began to glow whenever she picked them up, or hugged them, or even when she pet their heads or kissed them or sung them to sleep.

Sometimes it was just a soft flicker of orange or blue, but other times it was a pale, strong green, lighting up a dim room and emanating the joy within their souls.

She wasn’t sure how old they were, and Gaster got … strangely uncomfortable whenever she brought it up. But as independent as they might have been in many ways, they both seemed to enjoy being cared for as much as very young children.

Very young children for whom gentle, affectionate care had not been forthcoming before.

She supposed she should have expected it. Gaster had always had … difficulty expressing his emotions, and it had only gotten worse with age. But she had hoped …

Well. Hoping for a different past would do nothing. All she could do now was work with the future.

So she did.

She gave the boys every ounce of care she could manage, in every way she could think of. She carried them around as often as they pleased, even making a cloth wrap to secure them to her chest or back so she could get work done while still keeping them close. Sans would fall asleep in the carrier, but Papyrus would remain awake, looking around and appreciating every second of not only the better view, but the closeness to another living being. She hugged them several times a day, at minimum. One night before bed, she picked them up and cradled them, rocking them as she sung an old lullaby she had almost forgotten, and they both fell asleep with smiles on their faces.

They asked to be rocked and sung to every day after that.

They had their own room, their own bed, and they seemed to like it, but one night, a few weeks after they arrived, she woke up to find them both slipping through her door and clambering onto her bed, cuddling close to her sides and sinking back into sleep. After that, they came to her bed at least every other night, both of their eyes glowing a soft green as they drifted off.

Once, and only once, she found tears on her face as she watched them settle, and she swore she could feel Asriel’s soft fur and warm breath as he snuggled as close to her as he could get, long after he had moved into his own bed.

Their desire for attention was quite normal for that age—even though that age was … rather vague—but it seemed more pronounced than what she was used to. Certainly, Asriel had always enjoyed hugs and cuddles and liked to slip into her bed at night. He had always been an affectionate child. But Sans and Papyrus … they craved attention as if they had been denied to all their lives. As if they had wanted it for a long, long time, and now that they finally had it, they feared that they might lose it at any moment.

As if they still couldn’t believe that they were getting it, as often as they wanted. As if they had to prove to themselves, every day, that they could really have a hug anytime they wished.

Sometimes one of them would clamber up into her lap while she was in her armchair, in the evening, or in the middle of the day, and she would set her book or knitting aside and hold them, stroking their head as she stared down at them, letting her affection for them shine through in her eyes and her smile.

And they would stare back up at her, wide-eyed and wondrous, their sockets glowing, as if she had just given them the world.

She wondered if they would ever understand that they had given the world to her in return.

There were so many questions she had for Gaster. So many things that worried her, occasionally _terrified_ her, so many things that didn’t make sense. But she knew that there was no point in asking. She knew that he would just clam up again, and there was nothing she could do that would get him to open up.

And she supposed it didn’t matter.

She couldn’t change what had already been done—the childhood they had lived so far that had apparently been so lacking in affection and everything a child should take for granted. All she had was now. All she could do was give them all the love and care they had missed out on, and try to make up for the time lost.

She could hold them tightly, touch them softly, kiss them gently, and show them exactly how precious they were.

She could hope, as fervently, as she could, that it would be enough.

And maybe, if she was very lucky, it would.


	5. Day 27: Parents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys continue to be amazing. Thank you. :)

Toriel had known from the moment she first met the boys that Gaster had no idea how to be a parent.

He didn’t even seem to _want_ to be a parent, even though there was no way the boys had been born by accident. She supposed it could have been a whim. Gaster was very logical, practical, but there were times he could do the most ridiculous things and not even be able to give a proper explanation for them.

Perhaps he had been lonely. Or perhaps being the last skeleton had finally gotten to him. It had gotten to him in the past, of course, but before, he hadn’t had the skills to actually do anything about it.

If the idea had hit him when he had the resources to make it so he _wasn’t_ the last skeleton …

That was her best guess, and given how little he had told her so far, she had a feeling it was the only answer she was going to get.

It wasn’t exactly the best reason to have children, but she could understand it nonetheless.

But it still wasn’t an excuse to neglect those children once he had brought them into the world.

Or to treat them with the same cold distance as he might speak to someone he didn’t know very well and didn’t particularly like.

Gaster didn’t exactly have a … voice that was suited for speaking with young children, the tone that came so naturally to her. She couldn’t blame him for that. But she quickly found that not only did he not know how to speak kindly, but he also didn’t know how to _not_ speak _un_ kindly, at least not when the impulse to do so struck him.

Sometimes, he was simply cold, analytical, logical, the sort of tone she was used to hearing when he wasn’t in a very forthcoming mood.

Other times, especially if they interrupted him—or, in Papyrus’s case, tried to reach over and pet his head—he snapped at them, still quiet, but sharp and unforgiving, the sort of voice that would have made Asriel sniffle and run away.

The boys, to her dismay, seemed used to this behavior, as if they had never known anything else.

She wasn’t sure what Gaster actually _said_ when he snapped, given that he almost never signed while doing so. But the tone was enough to tell her all she needed to know.

She tried to work with him gently at first. To step in when it looked like he was getting frustrated with them, before he could say something hurtful. Honestly, he didn’t spend much time with them anyway, but she knew that simply keeping them away from him wasn’t going to help him improve. So she encouraged them to spend time together—or, rather, encouraged the boys to play close to Gaster—and made sure to stay there herself so she could “moderate,” as it were. After a while, she began giving him advice, modeling a kinder way of speaking and hoping he would pick up.

He didn’t. He just ignored them more.

He wasn’t so much actively aggressive toward them as he was … easily irritated. He didn’t seem to realize that children weren’t capable of sitting still and quiet for long periods of time—that they weren’t always convenient for adults, and that was normal behavior. It made sense, when she thought about it. He had never snapped at Asriel, but he had also never spent much time around Asriel—he would respond when Asriel spoke to him, but for the most part, he either kept his distance or remained silent.

But even with the minimal improvement, Toriel kept trying. She made mental notes of all the areas in which he was … less than skilled, and came up with things he could do when the boys were bothering him that would redirect rather than scold, and a few more ideas that would actually encourage connection and bonding, for when Gaster had let go of his … harsher tendencies.

It was clear, though, that it would be a long process. He still snapped at them sometimes, when she wasn’t paying close enough attention. He still gave them glares that sent them scurrying away without a word. He still looked at them more like pests than precious little lives he had brought into the world. Miracles. The only children of his species that had existed in hundreds of years.

On one occasion, and exactly one occasion, he tried to smack them.

Tried to smack Papyrus, specifically.

Papyrus was undoubtedly one of the most enthusiastic children she had ever met, and he tended to jump into things without thinking much about them beforehand. It wasn’t a bad characteristic, by any means. Just one to be worked with, guided, so it could help his interactions with others rather than hinder them.

And honestly, trying to grab a colorful ball of yarn out of her basket while she was knitting was hardly the worst thing she had ever seen a child do.

But Gaster had been standing next to her at the time, having one of the closest things they had had to a real conversation since he arrived, and as soon as he saw that little hand reaching for the yarn, he lifted his own.

Toriel’s arm was in the air before she had fully processed what she was seeing.

And then Gaster’s wrist was squeezed in her grip, and Papyrus stood there, staring, one hand on the yarn as he looked back and forth between them, confused and unsure.

Gaster stiffened in her grip, but didn’t try to pull away. He looked off to the side, somewhere between embarrassed and irritated. After a few seconds, she let his hand go and turned to Papyrus, smiling and handing him the ball of yarn that had intrigued him so much.

He blinked, then smiled, and scampered off to play with his new toy.

Only once he was out of the room did Toriel turn to Gaster, truly frowning for the first time in days.

“We don’t hit here, Gaster,” she said, as gently and kindly as she could manage, like she might speak to a small child who didn’t yet understand.

But Gaster wasn’t a small child. He had far more experience, and far more power, than a small child, and on some level he _did_ understand. He understood that she had never approved of violence, no matter how small. And she knew, from the look in his eyes, that he had done this sort of thing many times before.

She dropped her hand back to her lap, and Gaster took a step back, dropping his eyes to the ground, his cheekbones faintly flushed in embarrassment. Toriel gave him a long, sad look, and tried to push aside her anger. Anger wouldn’t help right now, just like it wouldn’t help with a child who had struck another.

Maybe that really was how she had to deal with this. Like she would help a lost child. Even if that lost child now had two children of his own.

“I know you don’t want to hurt them,” she said at last, gently, carefully. Gaster kept his gaze down, but she could tell he was listening. “That’s why I want to help you. I know that you can be a good father, if you try. I know that you want what’s best for them. And I’ll help you. We can work together. I can help you find other ways to work with them. I know you love them, and—”

Without warning, Gaster spun around and walked out of the room, so fast it was almost a run. In seconds, he was gone through the front door and into the courtyard, and Toriel was alone in the living room, staring at the spot where he had been, her mouth open, her hand reached out to rest on his shoulder.

She dropped it again with a long, heavy sigh.

Well, for a job this big, at least she had all the time in the world.


	6. Day 35: Failure

Gaster must have been standing there for at least five minutes before she finally noticed him.

At least, judging by the look on his face. But then again, knowing him, he could have easily waited twenty minutes without showing a sign of it, and just as easily waited for ten seconds looking like he had waited an hour.

It couldn’t have been longer than twenty minutes, to be certain. She had only sat down here twenty minutes ago, and a few minutes after that, both the boys had clambered up into her lap, as they often did in the evenings when they were sleepy but not quite ready to go to bed.

She had been knitting, but she put it aside and adjusted them both in her arms. They were big for their apparent mental age, but to her, everyone was small, and she had no trouble cradling both of them against her chest like toddlers, their heads tucked in the crook of her arm as they snuggled against her and closed their eyes. They were asleep almost faster than she had thought possible.

It was easy to focus on them, though. Easy to watch the gentle movement of their breath, their unconscious smiles, the occasional flicker of a glow in their eyes that grew when she rubbed their heads. It was easy to look at them and focus on the affection, the love she felt for them, growing more by the day. She wasn’t sure what she had intended when she first brought them here with Gaster, but now … she couldn’t imagine letting them go.

Even though she knew, deep down, that they would never be hers.

But she was very familiar with the feeling of being watched, and eventually she noticed the faint tingle on the top of her head that came with a set of eyes locked onto her. She looked up, and found Gaster glancing between her, the boys, and the floor, as if he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to look.

He looked … nervous.

Distressed.

Sad.

But as usual, he was doing his best to shove every one of those feelings down.

She had to bite back a sigh, because if she let it out, she had no doubt it would be loud enough to wake the boys.

She stood up from her chair as carefully as she could, cradling the boys as she went. They shifted, but neither of them woke. They kept on smiling and dreaming away, clinging to her robes with their tiny hands. Gaster tensed, but she just gave him a smile that she hoped conveyed “wait” as she slipped past him, down the hall and into the boys’ bedroom. She laid them down with practiced ease, pulling the covers up to their necks. Without even waking, they curled into each other’s arms, cuddling as close as they could get, Sans’s head tucked beneath Papyrus’s chin. She took another moment to smile down at them, to run her hand over their little heads, before she slipped out of the room and back down the hall.

Gaster, thankfully, had stayed where he was, and turned to look at her as soon as she stepped into the living room. She hoped, on some level, that he would start to speak on his own now that the boys were out of earshot. But she really should have known him better after all these years.

He stayed silent, and finally, Toriel sighed.

“Gaster. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

He opened his mouth, probably to tell her that nothing was wrong, he was fine, of course he was fine. But then he caught the look she was giving him, and he clamped his mouth shut. He squeezed his good eye shut and turned his head away.

_I failed._

He had signed it, just as clearly as he signed anything else. But Toriel still found herself blinking.

“Pardon?” she asked.

Gaster sighed and turned a little further away, curling his arms close to his torso.

_I failed_ , he signed again. _I had one goal, one job, it was my … it was my duty to … and now I can never …_

He trailed off, his magic hands disappearing as he grit his teeth and tightened his real hands into fists. Toriel looked at him for a moment, her eyes soft and gentle. She glanced over her shoulder, down the hall.

Gaster was nowhere near ready to be alone with the boys yet. And she wasn’t willing to let them go. But Gaster … Gaster didn’t need them to do his job. He worked in a lab, he didn’t need two children nearby. He knew where she was now, and she doubted that he would stop coming by regularly to see her. If the boys stayed here …

She sighed and took a step forward, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“Gaster … if you want to return … I won’t stop you,” she said. He looked up, blinking his good eye. “I … need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone where I am, but if you want to return to your work, you can.”

Gaster looked up at her for a long moment, then dropped his head again.

_No,_ he signed, calmer than before. Resigned. Lost. _It’s over now. It’s over._

He said it like it was the end of the world. And she supposed, in his mind, she probably was. She sighed again and gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“I suppose I never did get it through your head before. You always were very thick-skulled.”

Gaster stiffened under her grip and looked at her with something between offense and sheepishness. She shook her head.

“Gaster. You are more than just your work, _so much_ more,” she said, just like she had said it so many times before she left, just like she had been telling him for centuries. “I know you don’t believe that right now. But … I hope you can see that soon. Because I always have.”

Gaster stared at her for a long, long moment. A faint flush rose to his cheeks before he looked down again, seeming for all the world like that lost boy she had cradled against her on the battlefield so many years ago.

_You’re never going to come back, are you?_

It was his real hands signing this time, and she almost missed it. The signs were small, sheepish, his version of whispering, but still Toriel felt her lips press into a tight line, a sigh already building in her throat.

“Gaster …”

_I … I don’t blame you for leaving,_ he went on, a bit more clearly this time. _But … they … we … you’re very—_

“Gaster,” she cut him off, as gently as she could. He stopped and looked at her again. This time, when the sigh past her lips, she didn’t try to hide the ache in it. “I’m not going back. I can’t. I’m sorry, but this is the choice I’ve made. I’m staying here.”

She did her best to soften her gaze, rubbing her thumb over his shoulder bone to assure him that her choice had nothing to do with him.

“You are free to stay or leave, but I am staying.”

Gaster’s mouth pressed into a tight line. His gaze dropped again, and she swore she could feel him closing off, stuffing down every reaction she knew must be building in his head. His magic hands materialized again above his head, formal and proper, like he did when reporting the status of the Core.

_I understand._

He didn’t understand, she knew. Not really. He sympathized with her, perhaps, on some level, but he would never see things the way she did. She wasn’t angry. She knew that some things just couldn’t be changed.

He started to move away, likely to go and brood for a while, but this time, she didn’t let him. She tugged him against her side, holding him against her like she had held him all those years ago. He was a bit taller now, and so, so much older, but to her, he was still that scared, lost boy. The boy who had no one. The boy that only had her.

She led him across the room, sat down in her chair, and held him like she held Sans and Papyrus, pulling him onto her lap and nudging his head to rest it against her chest. He sat stiff, unmoving, she could feel him beginning to shake, but she didn’t let him go, and she didn’t react. She put a hand on his skull and rubbed her fingers over it while her other arm held him close, warm and safe.

When she finally let him go, more than five minutes later, he didn’t speak. He sat there for another minute, silent, before he climbed out of her lap, got to his feet, and walked down the hall. Toriel stood, smoothed down her robes, and sighed.

Perhaps she hadn’t been able to completely prevent the brooding. But it was a start.


	7. Day 38: Daddy

Sans and Papyrus, she found, were exceptionally good at making up games.

If they had been spending most of their days sitting in an empty room while Gaster worked, she supposed that only made sense. Especially since she hadn’t seen any toys in the room. They made up games by popping off their arms, legs, hands, and even their fingers—something that made Toriel flinch the first few times, given that it had been centuries since she had seen a skeleton child and Gaster wasn’t exactly prone to pop off his limbs on a whim. They acted out things that had happened earlier that day, or things they imagined. They could even find ways to play with the dust bunnies she gathered in a pile when she swept.

It took them a while to figure out how to use the toys in the ways they were intended. They were interested in them, of course, but they seemed more prone to pick them up and look at them from all angles, or even take them apart, than play with them as most children would. She showed them how to roll the toy cars across the floor, or play with the marbles, or turn on the electronic robot, but they still preferred to play with them in their own way.

She didn’t mind. The toys were for their enjoyment, after all. And they should play with them in whatever way they liked.

She was … a bit hesitant the first time they tried dropping the marbles into their eyesockets and rolling them around inside their skulls, but it didn’t seem to be hurting them, and as long as they could remove them safely, it didn’t seem like a problem.

She showed them how to play games as well. A few board games, but mostly tag, hide and seek, the sorts of things that were easy to learn and fun for just about every child she had met. She wasn’t much good at them herself—she couldn’t run very fast, and she was too large to effectively hide anywhere, but they were happy to play with each other, and she was always there to encourage them and watch from the sidelines.

They had asked her once if the games she taught them were “tests.” When prompted, they explained that that was what Gaster did with them when he took them out of their room. The “tests” sounded like evaluations of intelligence or skill, or occasionally medical examinations. The only “games” they knew of were the ones they had made up by themselves, in their room. She asked if Gaster did anything else with them when they were out of their room, and they just looked at her, confused.

She was beginning to get the impression that the boys spent their nights at the lab more often than at Gaster’s house, and she made mental note to tell Gaster that sleeping at the lab wasn’t doing his health any favors.

Maybe that was why they had spent so much time in that room. It was still incredibly inappropriate for a young child, but perhaps he had just never found a babysitter. He had always been so reluctant to ask for help, so intent on doing things himself, as if asking for help was shameful or weak. Perhaps he had thought he had to take on parenthood alone, and that was why he had done such a poor job of it. If he spent all his time in his lab, then perhaps he thought that keeping the boys in that room was safer than letting them wander around freely. Perhaps it was. But it still wasn’t acceptable.

But regardless of her growing discomfort with his treatment of them in the past, he had been improving in his treatment of them now. He was still far from affectionate, but she had managed to convince him to stop snapping at them. If he spoke, his words were neutral, and she was trying to think of ways to get him to speak more gently. He didn’t seem to understand what she meant at first, or why it was so important.

Then she asked him if he would speak to her in that tone, and he immediately flushed and ducked his head.

His voice now still wasn’t _gentle,_ per se, but it wasn’t harsh, and that was an improvement, at least.

She had also managed to get him to spend more time with them. Or, rather, spend time around them, usually just sitting on the sidelines while they played. He wasn’t fond of it. He claimed once that he couldn’t think when they were making so much noise, and he wasn’t being very productive just sitting there doing nothing. But she persisted, and he had never been very good at denying her a request.

He didn’t play with them. He didn’t move, or speak. He just sat in a chair she had pulled up or leaned against the wall. Sometimes he had a book, and sometimes he just crossed his arms and stared into the distance, apparently lost in thought.

But sometimes, she would look up from one of the boys’ game to find him watching them with interest. Perhaps not fondness. Perhaps not the sort of affection she would expect from a parent. But it was something, and it convinced her that what she was doing was working.

Usually, the boys played together. But sometimes Sans was tired and took a nap in their bedroom rather than in Toriel’s arms, and then Papyrus would play alone. She tried to keep him entertained to the best of her ability. Sometimes they read together, one of the books that didn’t interest Sans as much. Sometimes they designed new puzzles, or played two-person board games, or she would teach him a song or a clapping game popular among monster children when she was growing up.

On this particular day, Papyrus had dug out a small puzzle, covered in dust, from the closet, and held it out to her, chattering on about how fun it looked, asking her if she wanted to solve it with him.

Toriel had come very close to just saying yes. But then she paused and looked up, across the room, where Gaster stood by the wall, in his normal spot. He had been there for half an hour now, a mug in his hand, sipping occasionally but mostly just looking around the room. He looked bored. If she left him standing there for much longer, she had little doubt he would give up and leave to do something that would keep his mind more active.

Gaster had always loved puzzles.

She looked to Papyrus, then at the game, feeling her mouth curl into a small, hopeful smile.

“Do you think your daddy would like to solve it with you?”

It had been more than a hundred years since Toriel had seen Gaster spit out his drink.

Luckily, he was only drinking water, and he didn’t have enough in his mouth to make a mess. Not that Toriel much cared about that. She was far more focused on him all but coughing on the water remaining in his throat, before he swallowed hard and stared at her, his face so deeply flushed that it almost didn’t look like bone anymore. He blinked his good eye a few times, and she swore she saw it flicker pink.

Then he looked away, nervous, unsure, even as his magic hands appeared above his head.

_I … I’m not …_

He trailed off, his face still bright red and his eyes locked very firmly on the ground. Toriel furrowed her brow, even though a small part of her already knew what he was going to say.

“You’re not what, Gaster?” she asked nonetheless.

Gaster gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

_I’m not their …_

He didn’t finish, but of course, he didn’t need to. She knew what he meant as well as he did.

This … explained a lot, actually. It explained how unattached the boys seemed to him, how quick they were to latch onto her as their primary caregiver, how unaffected they seemed by Gaster’s absence or return at any given moment. But …

He had made them. He had made them from his own bone, they were his _children,_ the only other skeletons in existence, how could he not …?

But she was thinking from her own point of view again, rather than his. Parenthood had come naturally to her. She had been the “mom friend,” as some had called her, even before she met Gaster, even before she became an adult. That was her nature. It wasn’t his.

So what was obvious to her might not be so obvious to him.

She looked at him, a long, uncertain look, then turned to Papyrus and smiled.

“Papyrus, dear?”

Papyrus, who had been watching Gaster with curious eyes this whole time, perked up, his eyes brighter, like they always did when she used any form of endearment. “YES, TORIEL?”

Toriel smiled a little softer.

“Would you do me a favor and get me one of the books from my room? It’s a recipe book on the top shelf with a blue cover and a green title on the side.”

Papyrus beamed, straightening up even taller.

“OKAY!”

And without another word, he set the game down and bounded off toward her room. The book really was very high up, and would be hard to find among all her others. She probably had a couple of minutes before he returned.

She turned to Gaster, but Gaster’s eyes were on the floor, his expression locked off, his eyes burning with an emotion she couldn’t name.

“Gaster,” she said, as gently and patiently as she could. He still didn’t look at her. She sighed. “They’re your children.”

Gaster flinched, that harsh, full-body flinch he still couldn’t suppress no matter how many times she brought this up. _They’re not—_

“Please don’t lie to me.”

He stopped, his words dying in his throat, his hands frozen in the air. He looked up at her, and Toriel sighed again.

“I know that you … weren’t prepared for this,” she started, carefully.

Gaster didn’t respond.

“I know you don’t want this.”

He ducked his head a little lower, as if in shame, but still said nothing.

Toriel licked her lips and clasped her hands in front of her.

“But Gaster … you made them. You chose to bring them into this world. And … if you don’t want to be their father, then at least be there for them. Try. I’m here for you, I’ll help you however you need. But you have to try. I can’t do it for you.”

Gaster pressed his teeth into a tight, shaky line, but held her gaze. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, the faint sound of words slipping through into the air between them.

Then Papyrus bounded back in through the hallway, the oversized book clutched close to his chest.

Gaster turned away, and Toriel bit back a sigh to smile at Papyrus instead.

“HERE YOU GO, TORIEL!” he said, holding the book out to her.

Toriel’s face softened a little further as she took the book in her own hands. It was heavy, and she really had no use for it at the moment, but perhaps she could use it to make something special for dinner.

“Thank you very much, my child,” she said, making him beam with pride, his eyes shining. “Would you do me another favor, please?”

She didn’t know how it was possible for him to smile any wider, but he had never failed to surprise her so far. He nodded, so enthusiastically it looked like his head might fall off.

She looked over his shoulder.

“I think your … Gaster … could use a hug, and I think a Papyrus hug would be especially welcome.”

Gaster stiffened so fast that Toriel wondered if he could have turned to stone.

Papyrus all but leapt into the air in sheer glee.

“OH! I CAN DO THAT!”

He turned around, already starting across the room, toward where Gaster stood, his eyes flicking between the two of them, his body as tense as before. Papyrus bounded forward a few steps, then stopped about four feet away, his head tilted up to look Gaster in the eyes.

He hesitated, drawing his arms in and reaching them out every second or so, staring at Gaster with questioning, but hopeful eyes.

Toriel had never seen Gaster look more uncomfortable.

But he looked at her, and she nodded, smiling encouragingly.

He didn’t look encouraged.

But a moment later, his shoulders fell, and he turned back to Papyrus with a resigned expression.

He didn’t say anything. But Papyrus took that nothing as a yes.

His face broke out into a wide smile, and he threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around Gaster’s ribcage and hugging him tight.

Gaster froze, his own arms locked to his sides, his body so straight that he looked like a pole with features. He glanced between Papyrus and Toriel, desperate, lost, and a little bit irritated. Papyrus, apparently still encouraged, hugged him tighter still. If Toriel listened very closely, she could make out a small, happy whine slipping between his teeth, and she could see his mouth curling into a smile, his brow smoothing out as he held Gaster as if it were all he had ever wanted in the world.

As if, no matter how many times she held him, her hugs could never quite sate the desire for hugs from the man who had brought him into the world.

When Gaster looked to her again, Toriel gave him a small, encouraging nod. He looked at her as if she had just given him the most monumental task in the world, but when she nodded again, her eyes flicking to Papyrus, she saw his shoulders sag again. He slipped one arm out of Papyrus’s grasp and, slowly, as if he were touching acid, he lowered his hand to rest on the top of Papyrus’s skull.

It was an awkward, forced gesture, something between a pat and a pet, but the way Papyrus’s eyes lit up in bright green proved that it was more than he thought he would get.

Gaster had never looked more uncomfortable in all the time Toriel had known him, and Papyrus had never looked happier.

It … wasn’t the best situation she could have imagined.

But Gaster still wasn’t pulling away, and after a few seconds he gave Papyrus another pat, a little more natural this time, and Papyrus latched on even tighter.

When Gaster turned to her for reassurance—or perhaps permission to let go—Toriel just gave him a soft, fond smile, trying to convey everything she felt without speaking a word. Trying to convey that he was doing the right thing.

And even under the thick mask of disappointment, even under the discomfort and the awkwardness that had barely begun to chip away, Toriel swore she caught a flicker of pride.


	8. Day 40: Love

The boys loved to explore the Ruins.

Really, they loved to explore any place that was new to them. The novelty never seemed to wear off. She knew it would eventually. The Ruins weren’t very big, and eventually they would run out of things to see. But for now—and for what she hoped would be a long time into the future—everything was still new, and they were still content.

She made sure to take them outside every day, even if she couldn’t take them to explore the abandoned city. Today they were playing in the courtyard. They had brought a few toys, but she already knew they didn’t need toys to make up very creative games. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure _what_ they were playing. But they were having fun, and they were safe, and that was all that mattered.

It was a miracle if she managed to convince Gaster to come with them, but today, after a good five minutes of subtle nudges, she had done it. He wasn’t happy about it. He had brought a book with him, and she could tell, even though he didn’t say it out loud, that he didn’t see the point in coming. It wasn’t like he was going to play with them, as much as she wished he would. But she wasn’t in good enough physical shape to keep up with the boys, either, and she knew they appreciated her presence nonetheless.

So Gaster sat beside her while she watched the boys, lost in his book, and she gave up on trying to get him to pay attention to them. Baby steps. If she was going to do this, it would have to be in baby steps.

And it was easy to forget about her frustration with Gaster when she saw the boys so happy.

Eventually, though, even her attention drifted away from the boys, and back to the grown man at her side. For the first time in a while, she took him in, all the little things that had changed and stayed the same since she had left. How much he had grown, even though she knew he had been fully grown before. How old and worn he looked, yet still so young. Especially when he was reading. He had always loved his books. She still remembered the gleam in his eyes every time she found a new textbook and passed it on to him. He would smile and thank her, then scamper off to a nice quiet corner and spend the rest of the day reading.

Sometimes he would look at her as if he expected her to stop him. As if he thought she would try to tug him away from his books, tell him he had spent too much time reading, and the look on his face when she told him he could read as long as he liked made her chest ache.

He didn’t seem to understand that all she wanted was for him to be happy.

He didn’t seem to understand how seeing him happy would make _her_ happy in turn.

And if books made him happy, well, then she would give him all the books in the world.

He still looked like that eager boy, as he sat there reading now. He still looked so enthralled by what he was taking in, so bright and curious about the world around him. She had seen so much potential in him, in every way, from the moment she met him. And she still saw that now.

That boy was still there, deep down, even if Gaster tried to shove him away.

And as long as he was there, then Toriel could still bring him out.

She opened her mouth to speak, to ask him what he was reading about, and how he was enjoying it.

Then she heard the rattling.

It was … familiar, in a distant sort of way. A sound she hadn’t heard in centuries, but one that had once been commonplace, even if it took her a moment to remember what it was.

She turned her head to Papyrus, wandering around the courtyard with a piece of cloth tied around his eyesockets, his arms out in front of him. Sans gave another quick rattle of his bones before slipping off in another direction.

They were both smiling, both giggling, and even though the game clearly only called for one of them rattling, Papyrus always rattled back, like a wordless conversation she would never be able to understand. The sound that had faded into the background all those years ago, when skeleton children ran around with other monsters, lively and thriving. When there were more than three of them left in the world.

But three was so much better than one.

She looked to Gaster, her mouth open, ready to point out the boys’ game.

Then she stopped.

Gaster’s book sat in his lap, his hands resting on top of it in an unconscious gesture to hold his page. But he wasn’t reading it. He didn’t even seem to realize it was there at all.

He was smiling.

It was a tiny smile, so small she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t already known his face so well. But she _did_ know his face that well, and she could see the softening of his good eye, the way his mouth quirked up just enough for her to see.

And he was looking at them.

It still wasn’t quite the sort of affection she would expect from a parent. But it was close. Closer than anything she had seen thus far. It was … fond. Fond and wistful and lost in old memories.

It was the closest to happiness she had seen on his face since she arrived.

Her chest twisted and ached and warmed, and Toriel felt herself smiling in return, her whole face softening as she committed this image to memory, a reminder of what was still within him, a reminder of what she was certain she would be able to achieve. She looked at the boys one more time, now giggling as Papyrus touched Sans’s shoulder and yanked off the blindfold before chasing him around the courtyard, then turned to Gaster again.

“You should be proud.”

Gaster blinked. His smile fell, and he jerked his head around to face her, his cheeks faintly flushed, as if he hadn’t realized he was being watched.

Toriel just smiled a little wider, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder as she nodded toward the boys.

“Look at them, Gaster,” she said, and after a long moment’s hesitation, he did so. “Look at your sons. You made them. You … found a way. I always knew you were destined for amazing things, but I think this is your greatest accomplishment. You created two living beings when no one would have thought it possible.”

Gaster’s eyes widened before falling to his lap, his hands clenching even as she gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“And they’re beautiful.”

Gaster pressed his mouth into a tight line. Toriel hesitated, then let her hand fall back to her lap.

“You really should be proud,” she finished, letting him hear all the love, all the affection that had never faded in the decades she had been gone. “Because I couldn’t be prouder.”

He started to shake, so hard he was almost rattling himself. He squeezed his eyes shut as tight as his mouth, and Toriel yearned to pull him into another hug. She waited, waited for him to speak, waited for him to get up and leave, as he had so many times. And she knew that even if he left, this was still a step in the right direction. She could still talk to him later. She could still take him out again later, and hope that this was just the first time of many that he would appreciate the boys as he should have from the beginning.

She opened her mouth, swinging back and forth between consoling him, trying to get him to stay, and telling him it was alright if he wanted to go.

But a second later, he leaned against her and pressed his face into her side.

He tucked himself close to her as if he was afraid he would never be able to again. As if he thought he was going to lose her. He didn’t cling. He didn’t cry. He just sat there, and a second later, she snapped out of her shock and wrapped an arm around him.

They hadn’t been sitting there a minute when she heard two sets of feet approach, and turned to find Sans and Papyrus standing in front of him, Sans looking confused, Papyrus, his blindfold now removed, ecstatic.

She smiled, even more softly, and held out her other arm.

Papyrus all but leapt onto the bench next to her, cuddling in her side, and Sans joined him a second later. And unlike Gaster, they didn’t hesitate to cling to her, as if she were all they had in the world.

She felt Gaster stiffen under her other arm, but he didn’t say anything. And Papyrus lifted his head to smile, his eyes wide and soft and perfectly happy. It looked like the final piece of his happiness had clicked into place, and now he had everything he had ever wanted.

Sans … well. Sans looked happy to be close to her and Papyrus.

Whatever issues he had with Gaster—understandable issues, given Gaster’s behavior—she knew it would take time for him to work past them. But if she could work with Gaster … if she could tap into that parental affection she _knew_ was there, even if it was just a spark … then maybe, in time, Sans could see him like Papyrus did.

Until then … until then, they were happy. They had each other. They were together.

And one way or another, she knew everything would be alright.


	9. Day 41: Answers

_Subject One and Subject Two._

It was only by chance that Toriel glanced at Gaster right as he signed the words.

She knew he was there. She had heard him come in. But she had been in the middle of mixing some batter in a bowl, so she had called a greeting over her shoulder as she finished it, and had just been turning around to face him when he spoke, his magic hands signing along, fluid and curt.

It took her a few seconds to process the words, and even longer to realize she had no idea what they meant.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, casual and pleasant, smiling through her confusion.

Gaster stood up a little straighter, forcefully, as if he were fighting every second to avoid curling into a ball.

 _Subject One and Subject Two,_ he repeated, his words crisp and clear even though she couldn’t understand them, his signs even more so. _That’s what I called them, before you came._

Toriel blinked. She blinked again. She kept blinking as her mind struggled to make any sense of what he was saying, she understood the words but she couldn’t _comprehend_ them.

“I …”

She trailed off, her voice dying in her throat. Gaster stared at her for a few seconds longer, even as he brought his arms close to his torso, even as his bones began to tremble, until finally his eyes fell to the floor.

 _That’s what I made them for,_ he went on, a little more quietly, but no less clear. _As test subjects._

And slowly the words began to sink in. Bit by bit, like a stone settling into wet sand. Deeper and deeper, sharper and harder, and suddenly his fear looked different than it had before, his anxiety, the look in his eyes, even if he wouldn’t meet hers. This was a … confession.

But what …?

_I was going to … experiment on them._

She tried to breathe, tried to speak, tried to cut him off and ask him to explain, it didn’t make sense it was … it was a joke, a horrible joke, he had always had a strange sense of humor but—

_I was going to use them to find a way to break the Barrier._

He was shaking harder now and she wanted to pull him into her arms but she didn’t know how to move and something was sticking her in place, all she could do was stare at him he was shaking so hard he was rattling, his arms wrapped around himself in a clumsy attempt at comfort, he wouldn’t look at her but she swore she could still see the ache in his good eye.

_I was going to … subject them to painful tests against their will, I was going to keep them in that cell for good, I was never going to give them names, I was going to keep them locked in my lab for the rest of their lives or until the Barrier was destroyed._

Even his magic hands were shaking now. There were holes in those hands, too, she had never really noticed before, it was like a scar, a scar from a battle she hadn’t been there to see, a battle that had left him looking like the victim even though he was … he was …

He glanced up at her, and it only took a glance for her soul to twist and clench in her chest.

 _You shouldn’t be proud of me. You shouldn’t let me stay here,_ he went on, and his voice was so quiet now, so distant, but somehow sharper and stronger than before. _You should throw me out of here or … or just end it now._

He shook his head and squeezed his good eye shut.

_It was a mistake for you to care for me. I’m not worth it._

An old, well-worn instinct urged her to contradict him, to tell him that of course he was worth care, he was worth care and love and all the kindness in the world.

But the words died before they could even reach her lips.

Because she could still hear his own words, echoing in her head. And every time she heard them, she could feel them settle a little deeper, the rock in the hand almost covered now and she could feel every sharp edge cutting deep into her she could hear every word and she …

No. No this was … it wasn’t a joke, but it … this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real, none of this … none of it made sense, it …

But it did make sense.

And even as she shoved each piece of the puzzle away, she could feel them all clicking into place.

She could see the way he insisted they weren’t his children, he wasn’t their father, over and over again, as if the idea itself hurt him.

She could see them asking if her games were “tests,” as if that was the only reason anyone had interacted with them before.

She could see how he ignored them, snapped at them, tried to smack Papyrus’s little hand.

She could see them standing in that empty room—that empty _cell_ —with no toys and no bed, no shoes, just medical gowns, the beams barring them from the rest of the world, the way they stared when they stepped out of the lab, as if they had never seen the outside before, as if they had been stuck in that cell their entire life, _as if Gaster had never planned to let them leave—_

Gaster was looking at her now, his good eye peeking up at her even though his head still hung low, he was scared, scared of _her,_ but he had … she had been gone for decades, she knew she had been gone for such a long time, but she could still remember holding him in her arms, she had held him just the day before, held him as he pressed into her side as if …

As if it would be the last time.

He looked at her, and she looked at him, and she opened her mouth and closed it and the words in her head swirled around until they were a jumbled mess and his eyes burned into her, so young, so old, so incredibly old, and he had …

Gaster opened his mouth, lifted his hands, his _real_ hands, his fingers forming the beginnings of a sign.

Toriel turned around and ran.

She was a coward. She knew she was a coward, she was a horrible, terrible coward, running away from her problems rather than facing them, but she didn’t care, she had to get away, she couldn’t stay there, she couldn’t leave—

The boys. She had to …

Her feet carried her down the hall before her thoughts even solidified, tugging open the boys’ door and slipping inside, only to slam the door shut and lock it behind her. For a second, she thought about putting a chair under the handle, until she remembered there were no chairs in here. She turned and looked around the room, what did she have to work with, she … she couldn’t stay here forever, she knew that, but right now she had to keep them safe, keep them away from … he wouldn’t do anything, not with her around, he wouldn’t dare, she _knew_ that, but she still … she couldn’t … she had lost five already, she couldn’t—

“TORIEL?”

Toriel tensed and looked down, her breath coming in short huffs, her hands trembling.

There they were. Both of them, standing just in front of her, watching her, like they had been watching her since she came in, though they had never spoken up. They had latched onto her robe, as they so often did. It was so normal she hadn’t even noticed it.

They looked concerned. Toriel tried to open her mouth to comfort them, tried to make herself smile, but she couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she could barely even _think._ So she just stood there, looking at them, taking in every detail and engraving it deep in her mind.

“WHAT’S WRONG?” Papyrus pressed, staring up at her with wide, worried eyes.

Sans said nothing, but Toriel could see the panic in his eyes as well, his tiny fingers clinging to her robes as fervently as ever.

He was so small. Both of them were still so small.

When was Gaster going to …? How long would he have …?

They were children. They were tiny, innocent children and he was going to …

Her breath choked off in her throat, and it was all she could do to swallow back the sob building behind it. She brought them close to her, as close as she could without hurting them, and despite their confusion, neither of them struggled. She stepped back, tugging them with her until she bumped into the wall. Then she slid down against it, sitting as close as she could, pulling them into her lap and settling them in and they didn’t fight, they never fought, they were worried, they were scared, but she could still feel them relaxing as they snuggled further into her embrace.

The world was pressing into them, collapsing around them, but she still held them. They were still with her. Everything else was gone, every _one_ else was gone, her children, her two children, five children, all seven of her children _dead_ but these two …

They were safe. The world wasn’t safe, nowhere was safe, no _one_ was safe, but here … they were alright. They were here, in her arms, and they were unharmed, undamaged, and she held them close and focused on the steady thrum of their tiny souls against to her own.

Her eyes burned, her breath hitched, and her throat closed up, and everything she knew and loved, everything that had remained steady in her mind all the years she had been gone, crumbled into dust.

But her boys were here.

They clung to her, and she held them, and for a while, just for a little while, she let herself believe that Gaster had never been further away.


	10. Day 42/237: Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here the story comes to a close! Sort of. I've realized that there are a lot of loose ends to be tied up (specifically the boys' point of view, Gaster's, and what the heck is going on with Asgore and Alphys), so I will be posting three bonus chapters in the future. However, as I will be out of town for almost half of May, they likely won't come out for at least another month, so for now, I'm marking this story as complete.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who read, left kudos, commented, and/or bookmarked this story!! I really hope you enjoyed it. :)

That night, she slept in the boys’ room.

She knew it was silly, not to feel comfortable leaving. This was her house, after all, and even if Gaster was strong enough to hurt her, he wouldn’t do so. Not in her house. Not at all.

She wasn’t sure how she felt so sure of that, given that she had already watched everything she knew about him be turned on its head. But she had learned to trust her gut.

Especially when ignoring it all this time had caused her to miss everything that was right under her nose.

The bed was too small for her to fit with the boys comfortably, so she just leaned up against the wall at the foot of the bed. Without a word, both boys changed into their pajamas, clambered into her lap and settled in, nestling into her chest as if they had slept upright all their lives.

She hadn’t thought much about it before, how easily they slept in that position. After all, Asriel had slept upright at times, too. But Asriel had also spent the early years of his life being carried everywhere. He was used to napping in their arms rather than in a bed. She had realized weeks ago that Gaster avoided contact with the boys as much as possible. Yet they slept upright just as easily as Asriel had.

For the first time, she thought back to the room—the _cell_ —she had found them in, and remembered the bench on the wall, the closest thing to a bed they had. No blankets. No pillows. Just a hard bench and an equally hard wall to lean up against, and another child to hold.

She swallowed against the tears building in her throat, the nausea rolling in her stomach, but the boys were, apparently, much more observant than she gave them credit for. After a few minutes, she saw a blue and orange glow began to emanate from close to her chest, and looked down to find two sets of eye sockets staring up at her, one lit up in blue, the other in orange, sending out a faint soothing aura she had forgotten expressed more than just emotions.

It was for comfort.

For comforting others.

They were trying to comfort _her._

She wasn’t sure whether or not the glowing was what helped her, but either way, only ten minutes later, she found herself drifting into sleep.

They were still out when she woke up the next morning, early, even if she didn’t know exactly what time it was. Papyrus was usually up as early as her, but Sans tended to sleep in. Today, both of them were still deep in sleep, clinging to her and each other as they snuggled as close as they could.

She spent a few minutes just looking at them, staring down at their precious, innocent faces, thinking only that they deserved so much more than what they had been given.

Even more than what she would be able to offer.

But that wasn’t going to stop her from doing her best.

In the back of her mind, she never forgot what—who—was waiting for her, just outside the door. She knew he hadn’t left. She wasn’t sure why. It would be just like him to run away, to leave in the middle of the night without saying anything. But she knew it wasn’t true.

And she knew she couldn’t avoid him forever.

With all the willpower she possessed, she lifted the boys in her arms and got to her feet. She laid them on the bed with care not to wake them, and they immediately snuggled up together, hugging even as she pulled the blankets up to cover them. She stroked their skulls, pressed kisses to their foreheads, and whispered that she would be back soon.

One way or another, she would be back very soon.

Then she slipped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Gaster wasn’t in his bed, of course. Not that he ever was in the morning. He was the last to go to sleep and the first to wake, consistently. He had always been like that, as if he had to fight his very nature in order to let his mind rest. He wasn’t in the living room, and she already knew he wasn’t in her bedroom—he had never gone in there, even once. He seemed to think it was too personal a space for him to breech.

She hadn’t agreed with him before. Now … now she didn’t know.

She wasn’t surprised to find him sitting at the table, staring down at a mug with one wide, blank eye. There was another mug across the table, still steaming, and she could smell the tea even from the entrance to the kitchen. It took her a few seconds to recognize it as the same blend Asgore had favored, the blend she had tried but never quite managed to replicate after she left.

Gaster had never been much good in the kitchen. But apparently he had had plenty of time to learn this.

He didn’t look up when she sat down in the opposite chair. She looked down at the tea. She didn’t want to drink it. Or at least … part of her didn’t want to drink it. But another part of her was already moving her hand forward, slipping her fingers into the handle of the mug to lift it to her lips.

A shiver ran through her as the familiar flavors touched her tongue, and she swallowed back the tears brimming in the corners of her eyes.

She almost said something. Almost.

But the words died in her throat, and she was left sitting there, silent. She set the mug in front of her, the rest of the tea untouched.

Gaster still didn’t meet her eyes, and in a way, she was glad. She wasn’t sure she could stand looking into that empty socket right now. She didn’t know what she would see, and she didn’t want to find out.

She didn’t want to risk the chance that she would see that scared, curious, bright boy, just as she saw the man who came so close to torturing his own children.

She barely noticed Gaster’s hands—his real hands—lifting into the air, but she couldn’t miss when they began to form signs, small and shaky, like a hoarse whisper.

 _I’ll leave,_ he said, with just his hands, his real voice silent. _I’ll go back, and you’ll never have to see me again._

It was like a monotone, even without a voice. Straightforward and matter of fact, like he had always been. She knew he wasn’t lying. She knew all it would take was a nod on her part, and he would be gone, out of her life, out of the boys’ lives, and she would never have to worry about him again.

She looked at him, and for a split second, for just one second, she felt all of the anger that had been boiling under the surface, muffled by fear and confusion and grief.

And she wanted to kill him.

Just like she had wanted to kill Asgore when she found him standing over the body of that sweet little boy.

Then the feeling was gone, and she was empty again, staring at him as his eyes locked on his own untouched mug.

“If you leave, how do I know you won’t do it again?” she asked, her voice as empty as she was.

Gaster’s head lowered. He wrung his hands for a moment before he lifted them again.

_I can’t._

Toriel’s eyes fell on the holes, so large and gaping and she wondered, for a second, whether the pain he had suffered making them even held a candle to the pain he would have inflicted on those two children.

“And how do I know you won’t do another kind of experiment, something that would hurt someone else just as badly?”

She wasn’t sure how he could do something worse than this, but a day ago, she couldn’t have imagined that he would even do _this._ So she wasn’t going to try her luck.

 _You don’t,_ Gaster replied, just as plain as ever.

It should have made it worse to hear it, but somehow she found herself appreciating the honesty.

“Are you still considering it?” she asked, her voice cold and businesslike, and somehow she got the impression he hated that more than any anger she might have shown. “Doing that to them? Any of it?”

And then she saw that look on his face again, the loss, the sense of failure, and she remembered holding him as he mourned the loss of his accomplishments, the loss of his chance to make a difference, she remembered how she had reassured him and now she tried to imagine herself shoving him out of her lap, pushing him away. But she couldn’t, and she hated herself for it.

 _No,_ he said, as plainly as before. _I knew from the moment I left the lab that I would never go back. Not with …_

He trailed off, and after a few seconds, his hands fell to the table again, and he was still.

Toriel’s hands curled into fists. She took a long, deep breath, even though there was no anger to calm. She was too tired, too overwhelmed, for anger.

“Did you ever question yourself?” she asked, not even trying to hide the ache in her voice. She stared at him, her eyes shining. “Did you ever look at them and think that you wouldn’t do it? Did you ever look at them and see …?”

He didn’t see her expression, but he still curled in on himself a little further.

_Yes._

Toriel shuddered. She hid it well—she had been hiding things for long enough that it took almost no effort.

“If I hadn’t left … would you still have done it?”

Gaster stared at the tea like it might come to life and swallow him up. He didn’t look like he would have minded if it did.

_I don’t know._

She thought she might feel another rush of anger at that, but she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t have room for it. Maybe she was too tired. Maybe she would feel it later. Maybe she would feel, or do, a lot of things later.

But this wasn’t later. This was now.

She let out a long, heavy breath.

“I always wondered if I could have done more for you. If I … if I had understood more of what you were going through.”

Gaster looked up, so suddenly that even he didn’t seem to notice he was doing it. He blinked, once, then twice, his good eye wide, and she looked away before her mind could feed her any of the images she knew it was cooking up.

“Our experiences may have been similar in some ways, but in others, I could never imagine,” she went on, as much to herself as to him. She shook her head. “Perhaps I should have considered that more. Perhaps if I had—”

 _No,_ he cut her off, and she could see the signs even without looking at him properly. He was shaking his head, more fervently than he had since he was a child. _No, you … you can’t … I did this. I was going to do this. Not you. None of this is your fault. My actions are not your responsibility._

“I will always be responsible for the actions of my children.”

She looked at him, and Gaster ducked his head again, even lower than before. _I’m not …_

He didn’t finish. She had several ideas as to why, but none of them made any more sense than the others.

“I took you in,” she replied, as matter of fact as him. “Perhaps I never used the word. Perhaps I … never wanted to step in when I knew you had already lost a family. But that was always how I saw you.”

He fidgeted a little, lost and confused and scared and she didn’t know how she felt about that.

_And now?_

She looked at him. Really looked at him, it hurt worse than anything had in so long but she still looked at him. She saw that boy on the battlefield, so guilty and scared, and she saw the man trying to smack Papyrus’s little hand, she saw the man who had locked two children in a cell, who had never given them names or clothes or a bed, who would have subjected them to horrors she couldn’t have imagined, if she hadn’t stepped in.

She sat up straighter.

“I will never allow you to hurt those boys, physically, verbally, or otherwise.”

Gaster said nothing. He wasn’t looking at her, but she knew she was paying attention.

“I cannot leave you alone with them, not in good conscious. I …” she trailed off, her firm voice losing its edge as the emotions welled up inside of her. “I don’t know if I can trust you again. I don’t know if I’ll … _ever_ be able to trust you again.”

He tried to hide the hurt in his eyes, but she had known him too long for him to do that properly. She didn’t regret it, and he didn’t look like he had expected any different.

Toriel paused for a long, long time, then sighed.

“But I don’t trust you out there either.”

She didn’t fully understand it until she said it out loud.

Because she _didn’t_ trust him out there. She didn’t trust him here, but when he was here … she knew he wasn’t hurting anyone. When he was here, she could watch him. When he was here, she could stop him before he hurt anyone else.

She had been gone for decades. And in those decades, he had fallen to this.

If she hadn’t left … if she had stayed, if she had been there to see the signs, because there _must_ have been signs …

She curled her hands into fists again, then let them relax.

“Will you tell me why?”

Gaster looked up again, almost on reflex, blinking his good eye as he hesitantly met her gaze. _I’m sorry?_

“Will you tell me why you did it?” she asked, doing her best to keep her voice from shaking.

As expected, Gaster’s eyes fell again, resting on his hands instead of on the tea. She had never noticed how careful he was not to brush the holes with his fingers. She wondered if they still hurt.

 _I didn’t want him to suffer,_ Gaster replied at last, his face distant and solemn. _The King. He’s already suffered so much for the rest of us. For me. I didn’t want him to …_

Toriel’s face felt cold, cold and hard, but only because it felt like she was about to burst from the inside.

Burst from what, she wasn’t sure.

“Asgore is not your responsibility, Gaster.”

But Gaster was gritting his teeth, shaking his head, his attention locked on his own thoughts, lost in the emotions he tried so hard to suppress.

_I … I had to do something. I can’t just sit around waiting for another human to fall, waiting for him to have to—_

He stopped, hands frozen in the air. He glanced at her, just long enough to meet her eyes, before he closed his own.

_If anyone is going to make that sacrifice, it should be me._

“Why, Gaster?” she felt herself asking, before she even realized the words were in her head. “Why should it be you? Why should it be you any more than anyone else?”

_Because I shouldn’t have survived!_

She barely registered the signs, faster and more passionately than he had signed anything since he arrived. He was staring at her now, and she swore she saw his eyes flicker between a few colors before going dark again. His breath came in fast, shaking pants, and his hands were trembling.

He dropped his gaze. The trembling didn’t stop.

His good eye shut.

_I … I shouldn’t … they all died. All of them. Every single one of them, but I … I lived. I lived because … because I was too cowardly to fight back until they were going after me. Because I just stood there and watched my … my family die, I watched them all die and I did nothing, I let the humans murder them and I didn’t fight because of some stupid ideal, they’re DEAD because I—_

She hardly felt herself moving, pushing herself out of her chair and shifting around the edge of the table.

But she could never have suppressed the sensation of bones pressed up against her as she pulled him into her arms and hugged him tight.

It felt different. It felt … wrong, in so many ways. She shouldn’t be hugging him. She was furious, she was livid, she was … she didn’t know what she felt. It was like what she had felt for Asgore in the day before she left. How she had hated him, more than she had ever hated anyone in her life, but she had still loved him under it all.

Just like she still loved Gaster.

She loved him, and she hated him, and somehow, those two feelings settled together without a hint of conflict.

Gaster didn’t hug her back. He pressed his face into her robes and leaned against her, but he didn’t hug her back. She knew now, why he had never hugged her back any of the other times she had held him. She knew that he didn’t feel like he deserved it. She knew that he _didn’t_ deserve it.

But love wasn’t deserved. Love wasn’t earned. Love … was.

She loved her children unconditionally, and she would have forgiven them anything, no matter how bad.

But Gaster wasn’t a child who had hit another child, who had broken another’s toy or said something mean.

Gaster was an adult, an adult who had used his power to hurt children, an adult who would have used his superior strength to hurt them over and over again.

And she knew that the second those two children entered the room, she would choose them over Gaster without a thought.

But now … right now …

“Your family is dead, Gaster,” she said, gently, in a voice that would never be quite the same as the voice she had used before. “Your family is dead because humans killed them. They are not dead because of you. They would have died whether or not you stepped in. Even if you had stopped one, you know there were far more that would have come. You know that you couldn’t have beaten them all.”

Her arms tightened, neither in affection nor threat.

“You know that causing more pain isn’t going to bring your family back. And it isn’t going to pardon you for crimes you did not commit.”

Gaster shook his head against her, and she could feel him trying to sign with his real hands, but there was no room, so a second later the magic ones appeared, floating above his head.

_I … I have to be useful, I have to—_

“Is that all I am, too, then?” she cut him off, watching as his hands froze before hanging limp in the air. She pursed her lips, even though he wouldn’t see. “Is my worth limited to my ability to cook and sew and care for people? If those qualities were to disappear right now, would I lose all my worth in your eyes?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to for her to feel the horror and negation rolling off him in waves.

She sighed again, and her arms around him loosened, but did not slip away.

“You are intelligent, Gaster. Intelligent and talented in so many ways. But you are not your intelligence or your talents. You are you. Your life would be valuable even if you did nothing but sit still until the day you die. You are valuable _because_ you are you.”

She could feel him shaking in her grasp, faint, muffled, as if he was trying with all his might to keep still. She closed her eyes and let her mind fall back to the days of the war, the days afterward. Everyone who had died.

Everyone who had lived.

“You survived,” she said. “Surviving doesn’t make you responsible for those that died. And you don’t have to justify your survival every day you keep on living.”

He pressed a little closer, just for a second, before he pulled back to the spot he had been before. His magic hands appeared above his head, only a foot in front of her face.

_Why? Why did you leave?_

Toriel grit her teeth. She could feel herself there now, all those years ago. Standing there, doing nothing, while Asgore ripped the life and soul from that little boy who had done nothing to him. To anyone. That little boy who only wanted to go home.

Her breath came out slow and heavy.

“Because I couldn’t fight either,” she murmured, as much to herself as to him. “Because I watched someone I loved more than anything do something unimaginable, and I couldn’t stand to watch it happen again.”

She softened her face by sheer force of will.

“But I’ve spent too many years running away, Gaster. I’m not going to run away now.”

She felt him shift against her, as if he wanted to meet her eyes but couldn’t bring himself to do so. She stared down at the top of his skull, and it was so easy to imagine him smaller now, younger, held in her arms like the child he had been.

“I cannot make you my first priority now,” she went on, and though her voice was gentle, the words did not leave any room for argument. “Those boys need me. They need a parent, a family, they need love and care and as you are not able to provide it, I will.”

It took all her effort not to tighten her hold, like she had gripped Asgore’s arms a dozen times, trying to tell him he had made the wrong choice.

“I will keep them safe, first and foremost. And I will not allow you to be a threat to them, in any way.”

He said nothing, but she felt him tense. Not very much. This was nothing he hadn’t expected, nothing he hadn’t already known.

She let a few seconds pass, let the words settle between them.

“But I will not send you away,” she finished. “And I will not leave you.”

Gaster shifted. This time it seemed to require visible effort for him not to look up at her. He wanted to, but at the same time, she doubted he would be able to stand it.

She wasn’t sure if it was more that he didn’t want to see her, or more that he didn’t want her to see him.

Perhaps it didn’t matter.

She sat there, in silence, holding him, for another few minutes. The silence hung around them like a blanket, reassuring as well as suffocating.

It was easy to pick out the sound of footsteps when they finally came. Easy to hear the pitter patter of little skeleton feet as they made their way through the living room and stopped as they entered the kitchen. Toriel drew a long breath and lifted her head.

And there were the boys, standing in the doorway, watching her with wide, worried eyes.

She knew that her behavior yesterday wouldn’t be forgotten. She knew that they were still concerned, and she couldn’t just brush it off. She knew that there was still so much healing to be done, and that theirs had to come before anyone else’s.

She looked down at Gaster, one more time, his face still buried in her robes. He knew the boys were there, even without looking. That instinct, apparently, had never left him, as much as he had pushed all other parental intuition aside.

She gave him one gentle squeeze, then stood up.

He didn’t cling. He didn’t resist.

He sat in his chair, staring at the floor, as Toriel crossed the room and pulled both boys into her arms.

They latched onto her immediately, just as they always did, and she tugged them closer, pressing kisses to the tops of their skulls and holding them so tight that she swore she would never let go again. They pressed close, and she felt their souls and smelled their scents and savored their gentle warmth against her. Alive, safe, and happy.

They had a long, long way to go.

But this was a start.

*

The first thing Toriel did, once everything had calmed down and she had convinced Sans and Papyrus that she was alright, was tell Gaster to apologize to them.

She had never demanded apologies from any child she had cared for. You couldn’t make someone regret what they did by forcing them to apologize, and forcing them to say something they didn’t mean might even keep them from reflecting on their actions and realizing what they had done wrong.

But Gaster wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t doing this for his benefit, or her own.

The boys had been living her for more than a month, and for that entire month, she had gone on as if Gaster was simply … incompetent. As if he had meant well, and merely come very, very short.

She had let the boys go on believing that what they had experienced their whole lives before now had been acceptable.

And that couldn’t go on another second.

Gaster didn’t protest, but she could see how much effort it took him to finally speak the words. He didn’t meet their eyes, and she knew that he didn’t mean it, not in the way she wanted.

He _was_ sorry. Just not for what she wished he was sorry for.

Both boys stared at him, confused, and Papyrus asked what he had done wrong.

Toriel had a list of about a hundred things Gaster should say he had done wrong, but she didn’t argue when he just said, “for how I treated you in the past.”

Papyrus blinked, tilted his head, and smiled.

Then he ran forward and hugged him.

Toriel could see Gaster fighting every instinct not to push him away, but in the end, he remained still, just letting it happen. That was enough for now.

Sans said nothing, just looked at him, eyes wide and curious, his smile as permanent and unexpressive as it had ever been.

And so things went back to normal.

Or, well … the new version of normal. The version of normal that all of them would just have to accept.

Toriel came very close to insisting that Gaster stay away from the boys all the time, staying home when they went out to explore the Ruins, staying out of the living room when they were playing. But she knew that would only upset Papyrus, and confuse Sans. So she let it continue, though she knew Gaster didn’t miss the glances she shot his way at least twice every minute.

There were days when she just wanted him at a distance, when all she could think about was what he had done, what he had come so close to doing. All she needed to do was tell him that the three of them would be going out alone, and he never protested.

She knew he wouldn’t try anything. Sometimes that was a reassurance. Sometimes it did nothing to calm her at all.

She was still angry at him, in a way she hadn’t been angry at anyone before. It was a little like how she was angry at Asgore, but … Gaster wasn’t Asgore. And she couldn’t think of them the same way.

Asgore wasn’t here, for one. She didn’t have to deal with him every day. And her being angry at him didn’t change anything.

Gaster knew when she was angry when him—more angry than usual, that is. When she really felt it, when it boiled up inside her so much that she almost couldn’t suppress it. He knew to stay away on those days, before she said a word about it. She never tried to get him to come anyway, and after a while, even Papyrus stopped asking about it.

But those days were brief. On most days … on most days she didn’t know what she felt. Not toward Gaster. She didn’t think about it. She almost didn’t have time to think about it. She was too busy raising two rambunctious, happy, growing little boys.

And grow they did, faster than any child she had ever met.

In six months, they seemed to have grown three years, reading and writing like experts, soaking up every bit of new information she gave to them like a sponge. There were almost no signs that they had once been locked away in an underground cell, kept away from the rest of the world, spoon-fed only the information Gaster saw fit to provide. They smiled and glowed and laughed and hugged and played and all she had to do was look at them for a smile to touch her lips.

Despite everything, they were doing well.

That was what was most important.

There had been bumps, of course. A lot of bumps. Before, she had thought that she just needed to help Gaster open himself up emotionally, so that he could be more present with the boys. So that he could be a good parent. But now … she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to think of him as a parent. She wasn’t sure she wanted the boys to think of him as their father.

And even if she _did_ want that, he wasn’t ready. Not even close. He still wasn’t emotionally available. He still just tensed and stood there when Papyrus hugged him, even though he didn’t fight it. He still snapped at them occasionally, and she could tell, as they grew, as it became clear that Sans’s interests and abilities aligned more closely with his own, that he was paying more attention to Sans and further neglecting Papyrus. Even Sans didn’t care for the arrangement, clearly uncomfortable with getting something his brother so desperately wanted, and not liking being pushed toward specific areas of science when he was more interested in others.

Toriel had a talk with Gaster about that. She had _several_ talks with Gaster about that.

He … didn’t seem to understand it. Perhaps in his eyes, he saw Papyrus as the sort of person who didn’t need that validation. He saw him as “normal,” in the way he had never been—and he seemed to project his apparently abnormality onto Sans just as much.

But Papyrus was just as special as Sans, even if it was in a different way. And even if it would take Gaster a long time to see that, she had at least gotten it through his head that he couldn’t play favorites.

And he learned. Slowly, bit by bit, he learned.

He got better.

It wasn’t ideal. It was very, very far from ideal. But it was better.

She still had nightmares, sometimes. Nightmares of what might have happened if she hadn’t decided to sneak into his lab. Nightmares of what he might have done, if he had never stopped her.

The following morning, she would give the boys an extra-tight hug, and take them out into the Ruins, far away from Gaster. He never asked to come along, and he never asked questions.

She hadn’t decided whether she would ever forgive him. Perhaps because she knew that it was not her forgiveness he needed to earn. And he had yet to reach the point of asking it from the ones who could give it.

In all honesty, she wasn’t sure if they ever could forgive him, because they didn’t know what he had almost done.

And she didn’t want them to ever find out.

It hurt him to not have her forgiveness. She knew that. She knew that, and it hurt her in return, but she also knew she couldn’t do anything about it.

She had meant what she said. He was her child, deep down. He would always be her child.

But the boys came first.

And if it ever came to it … if she ever had to choose between them and him … she knew she would pick them, without hesitation.

They were still the victims. And regardless of his reasons, regardless of his past, he might have ruined the lives of two innocent children. That fact would never disappear. She would live with that for the rest of her life, as would the boys, as would he.

She couldn’t change the past.

But she still had the future.

“HELLO, MR. FROGGIT! HELLO, MX. FROGGIT! IT IS A LOVELY DAY, ISN’T IT?”

Toriel blinked, and found her attention falling, once again, on the little boy wandering a few yards ahead of her, a bright grin on his face and his hand in the air as two Froggits hopped in front of their path. He waved them goodbye as they croaked and hopped off, while Sans lingered at his side, smiling as calmly as ever, his eyes bright and warm as he watched his favorite person in the world.

Then his eyes drifted back to Toriel, and none of the affection slipped away.

She smiled back.

They continued on their walk through the Ruins, two sets of tiny feet in front of her, and one larger set following a few steps behind.

It had been a while since Gaster had come out on a trip with them. At least two months, since she had stopped insisting on keeping an eye on him every waking moment. He still looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t dare refuse when Papyrus openly invited him to come care for the flowerbed, as they did every day.

She knew he was still doing it in an attempt to make her happy—or, rather, to avoid making her _un_ happy. But she swore that after a few minutes of walking, he didn’t look quite as forced as he had in the past.

He definitely wasn’t a parent to them. And he probably would never be. Not after what he had done, and not after what he had been ready to do.

Perhaps she would never forgive him. Not completely.

But this, what they had now … this, she could live with.

“what’s that?”

Toriel lifted her head, slowly, casually, to find Sans staring ahead of them, toward the archway leading out of the Ruins, his hand pointing forward. She frowned and followed his gaze.

“Hm? What is wh—”

Then she heard it.

It was a miracle that she hadn’t noticed it before, given that her instincts usually would have picked it up long before her ears could.

But there it was, distant and muffled but very definitely what she had thought.

Crying.

A _child_ crying.

Toriel was moving almost before she realized it, slipping past Sans and Papyrus, leaving Gaster to catch up with them, all but sprinting through the last part of the Ruins toward the flower bed. Through the archway, down the path, until she found herself staring at the one spot in the underground that still felt the rays of the sun.

And there they were.

There _she_ was, to be precise. A little girl, maybe eight years old, if Toriel remembered human aging properly. A little scraped, but otherwise uninjured, sitting on her knees, eyes clenched shut, not even trying to hold back her sobs.

There was a hat sitting beside her, with a large, curved brim, leaving nothing to cover her thick, curly black hair, or the tears streaming down her deep brown skin.

Toriel’s soul ached, and she stepped forward, a little slower than before, keeping her steps as quiet as possible, until she stood only a few feet away from the flowers.

“Hello, my child …”

The girl jerked, her head flying up, eyes wide, her breathing coming a little faster than before. She scooted back.

“Who … who are you?” she breathed, her eyes flicking to the three skeletons before returning to Toriel. “What … what’s …”

Her voice broke off in a whimper. Toriel’s whole form softened. She had forgotten how scared they all were, when they first arrived.

She held up her hands and forced her mouth into a smile, and found it didn’t take as much effort as she had expected.

“It’s alright, dear. Everything is going to be fine,” she said, as carefully and gently as she could. “My name is Toriel, and I take care of the Ruins. And this is Sans and Papyrus, and …”

She trailed off, and turned her head just enough to see the skeleton who had been walking behind her, now standing a few yards away.

His good eye had gone wide, his teeth pressed into a tight line, and she could already see a flicker of magic forming around his hand.

She stiffened.

“Gaster.”

Gaster flinched, and his gaze fell on her again, as if snapping himself out of a trance. Her voice had been gentle, so as not to upset the girl, but she sharpened her eyes, just for a second.

He said nothing. He didn’t move, not even to sign.

She turned to the girl again and felt her face soften once more.

“We won’t hurt you. You’re safe here.”

The girl had relaxed a bit. Only a bit, but a bit was all Toriel needed to work with.

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice shaking, though not quite as hard. She swallowed and glanced at the skeletons again. “What’s going on?”

Toriel smiled a little wider. She took one step forward, just one, far slower than normal. The girl flinched, but didn’t move back. Toriel bent and held out her hand.

“How about we go back to my house and have some pie, and I’ll answer all your questions?”

Two out of the other four children had rejected her offer the first time, and she knew the only reason the other three had agreed so quickly was because they were afraid. They were lost, they didn’t have anywhere else to go or anywhere else to turn to, and they had no other choice but to trust a kind face. She knew they didn’t really trust _her_. That took time. But time was one thing she had plenty of.

The girl looked at her hand. She looked at Gaster, then at the boys, lingering on them a bit longer. In the corner of her eye, Toriel could see Papyrus beaming, lifting his hand in a bright wave.

Slowly, the girl turned back to her, then leaned forward and rested her tiny hand in Toriel’s own.

“… okay.”

“Good,” Toriel said, gently, her smile a little wider. She helped the girl to her feet, checking her over for injuries as she went. “What is your name?”

The girl licked her lips and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “Bianca.”

“Bianca,” Toriel repeated. “That’s a lovely name.”

Bianca’s mouth twitched at the corners. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was a start.

Before Toriel had the chance to say anything else, Papyrus, apparently tired of waiting, stepped forward, grinning wider than she would have thought possible.

“HELLO, BIANCA! MY NAME IS PAPYRUS AND THIS IS MY BROTHER SANS! YOUR HAIR IS THE CURLIEST I HAVE EVER SEEN! THAT IS WHAT I WANT MY HAIR TO LOOK LIKE EXCEPT I DON’T HAVE ANY.”

Bianca blinked. She stared at him for a few seconds, caught between figuring out what he had said and accepting the fact that she was talking to a real skeleton.

“Uh … thank you?”

Papyrus beamed. “YOU’RE WELCOME!”

A few seconds passed in silence before Papyrus nudged his brother, and Sans stepped forward, hands in his pockets, permanent smile still painted on his face.

“hey.”

“Hey,” Bianca said, a little more relaxed, as if she could understand that greeting much more easily than a lengthy rant. She hesitated, then tilted her head. “Sans, right?”

“yup. i’m not as cool as papyrus, tho.”

Papyrus smiled again, but still patted Sans’s shoulder. “DO NOT SELL YOURSELF SHORT, BROTHER! YOU ARE VERY COOL EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE NOT ME!”

Bianca bit back a giggle, and Toriel felt her chest loosen, just a little more.

It was … strange, to greet a new human with other monsters at her side.

Strange, but not bad.

The children started chatting—well, Papyrus started chatting, and Bianca responded and Sans listened—as they started back toward the house, almost as if Toriel wasn’t there. Bianca glanced over her shoulder a few times, and Toriel could see a bit of hesitance lingering on her face, but she had relaxed, at least a little, and that was good enough for the moment.

Toriel smiled and followed them.

She heard the footsteps behind her, alternating between slow and fast, but she didn’t think about them. She knew that all five of them had left the area with the flower bed, walking under the archway into the main part of the Ruins, but she did not really notice it.

She only noticed the magic hands that appeared in front of her face once they began to sign.

_It was you._

She froze, staring at the hands, hovering only a foot or two in front of her. She blinked, then turned around to where Gaster stood, apparently so desperate to get her attention that he was willing to literally shove his hands in her face.

She would deal with that later.

Right now, the look on his face, filled with as much shock and betrayal as she had ever seen, was all that mattered.

“Pardon?” she asked.

He glanced over her shoulder, almost wincing before his eyes fell to the ground.

_One of the humans … some of the monsters who … saw them. They said that … they talked about someone who took care of them. Someone who …_

He lifted his head again, a crease in the center of his browbone.

_You protected them._

And there it was.

She had forgotten that she had never told him. She had forgotten, well … everything she should have remembered.

It had been a long time since the last human fell.

She had been expecting another would come for a while.

But she had been … too occupied, to think about the consequences.

Toriel held herself at her full height, staring down at him with definitive, sharp eyes.

“Yes. I did.”

He kept staring at her, unwavering, and she looked back as firmly as she ever had.

 _They’re humans,_ he went on, as if she hadn’t realized.

“Yes, they are,” she replied, her voice clear and resolute. “Just as my child was a human.”

Gaster pressed his teeth into a firm line.

_And you know how that turned out!_

Toriel jolted, and not a second passed after Gaster finished signing before he yanked his hands back toward his torso, all but gawking at his own audacity.

He dropped his gaze to the floor, like that boy who still viewed her as a revered queen and nothing more.

_I … I’m … I apologize._

Toriel clenched her teeth and curled her fists, then relaxed both and let out a quiet sigh.

“I know you never liked Chara,” she went on, because it was true, even if neither of them had ever said it out loud. “You made that quite clear at the time, and I wasn’t going to force you. I knew what you’d been through. What you’d lost. How you felt about all humans, no matter who they were.”

Even with his head hanging, she could see the tension in his shoulders slip, as if he knew he had no right to hold it up anymore. As if he knew that he could not stand before her and judge her, in any sense, after what he had done.

She pursed her lips once more.

“But you know why I left.”

_… Yes._

Maybe he hadn’t known before. Maybe he had really gone all this time and not thought of it, because it was so like him to miss the obvious in his quest for knowledge, for all that intelligence to go breezing right over the truth.

He knew now. Without a doubt.

She let the silence hang for another few seconds, closed her eyes, then opened them again.

“I told you that you were free to leave, if you wanted.”

Gaster looked up at her again, good eye wide, his mouth curved into a baffled frown.

_That was before._

Toriel hesitated. The thought had come to her quickly, but she knew this couldn’t be a rash decision.

But she had already made her choice.

“I don’t know how I feel about you being out there now,” she said, because she didn’t. “But what I said stands. If you wish to leave, you may. You will keep this place a secret. You will keep _me_ a secret, and the boys, and Bianca. And if she leaves, and you bring any harm to her, or assist in her capture, I will find out.”

Gaster shuddered, and she wondered whether her eyes could burn as brightly as they had before she had watched her children die. She wondered if they burned brighter because of it.

“You may leave, or you may stay. It is your choice. But if you stay, you accept her as well.”

His eyes flickered over her shoulder, just for a second, just long enough for Toriel to see the flash of contempt in his gaze.

_She …_

He trailed off. Toriel gave him a moment, then sighed again.

“You look at her as if she alone has committed every crime that was done to you,” she replied, drawing his attention back to her. “But would you judge every monster, every _skeleton_ , by the choices you have made?”

She probably would have done less damage if she had simply whacked him over the head.

His good eye went as wide as it could have, and only a second later, his gaze fell again, even lower than before. He tried to speak a few times, lifting his hands, opening his mouth, but nothing came.

He knew he had no response.

He knew there was nothing he could say now.

How could he judge a human, who had, thus far, done nothing, when he, a monster, had done so much worse?

“The humans that hurt you are dead, Gaster,” Toriel said, more gently than she had expected. He said nothing. She let out a long, heavy breath. “Time moves forward … as hard as you might try to hold it back. And even if you still think you’re clinging to the past … time takes you right along with it.”

Gaster lifted his head, just enough to look at her, just enough for her to try and fail to read the look in his eyes.

“TORIEL! ARE YOU COMING? I THOUGHT WE COULD MAKE A PIE FOR BIANCA!”

Toriel turned around almost before she had registered the voice, only to find Papyrus, Sans, and little Bianca waiting for them on the top of the staircase. Sans looked … confused, and a little suspicious, but Papyrus was just as patient and understanding as always, and Bianca … well, she seemed to be taking after the latter.

Toriel felt something in her relax, and smiled.

“Yes, Papyrus!” she called back.

Papyrus waved, and Toriel took a moment, just a moment, to turn and look at Gaster, still standing behind her, watching her with one wide eye.

“As I said. It is your choice.”

And with that, she turned around and started toward the children.

They saw her coming and started ahead, down the hall, just as she took the first step onto the stairs. She didn’t look back, but she listened, keeping her ears sharp on every tiny sound. On the breathing behind her. The fidgeting of cloth and bone. The thrumming of a soul that had changed so much in the years she had been gone.

Then, just as she reached the middle step, she heard the faint padding of footsteps behind her.

She said nothing, and neither did Gaster, but she still felt a tiny smile twitch at the corners of her lips.

They had a long journey ahead of them, without a doubt, with bumps and obstacles she couldn’t even imagine.

But she had her boys. She had a little human, one who might stay safe and sound, at least for a while.

And she had the remnant of her old life, of everything she had left behind, of everything she could only try to put back together.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was enough.

It was enough for her to move forward.

She put one foot in front of the other, climbing the stairs, toward the hallway above.

Perhaps … if she was very lucky … she would not move forward alone.


	11. Day 252: Mom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, would you look at that - I finally finished one of the bonus chapters! Just one, though - the others are very much a work in progress. I don't have a posting schedule for this, so they'll just come out as I complete them.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy!!

Papyrus liked Toriel.

He liked her almost as much as he liked his brother. She wasn’t as annoying as his brother, and she was gentle and smiled really nicely and made him good food and gave him hugs and kisses and told him he was very good and smart and special.

He liked Toriel a lot.

And Toriel said she liked him, too.

But she was worried about him. Both of them. She worried about them a lot, he thought. Sometimes, when he was playing, he would glance to the side and find her staring at them with sad eyes, eyes that looked much older than the rest of her did, eyes that had been sad so many times but never quite got used to it.

Sometimes he would pretend he didn’t notice, but other times, he would go up to her and put a hand on her arm and glow his eyes, just a little, as he asked what was wrong.

She hadn’t told him yet, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying.

She worried, and he was pretty sure she didn’t like Him.

Or, rather, something had happened to make her stop liking Him.

She had liked Him before. She had been … unsure about Him, at first. She had liked Him, but she got upset with Him sometimes. She didn’t like it when He did anything that made them feel bad. She wouldn’t let Him say anything that made them sad, and she definitely, _definitely_ wouldn’t let Him smack their hands, even though he had done it plenty of times before.

Papyrus asked her about that once, and she got a sad look on her face and told him that hitting people was never okay.

He had almost asked her whether it was okay to hit things, or whether she even knew that they _were_ things, but he couldn’t figure out how to put it into words.

Even when He had done bad things, Toriel had still liked him. She had tried to help Him do better. She had been gentle with Him, just like she was gentle with them.

Until … something happened.

Papyrus still didn’t know _what_ had happened. But something had happened, and she was got scared and upset and sad and it seemed like nothing Papyrus or Sans could do would make her feel better. Then she talked to Him and hugged Him and Papyrus thought everything would be the same but … it wasn’t.

She didn’t look at Him the same after that. She got mad at Him easier, and didn’t let Him stay with them when she wasn’t around. And He never did anything to fight it. He stayed away when she wanted Him to stay away, and He talked less, and He was very careful not to do anything that would make Papyrus or his brother feel bad—even though He still did not-nice things sometimes, because He had done not-nice things for a long time and Papyrus thought that maybe He had just never learned how to be nice.

Toriel didn’t try to get Him to hug Papyrus anymore, or play games with them, or talk.

Papyrus tried to hug Him once, and He didn’t push him away, but Toriel stood close by the whole time, her whole body stiff, and Papyrus thought that maybe she would rather He not be close to either of them anymore.

He really wanted to ask what had happened to make things change. But he didn’t.

It had been months since they had learned His name, and Papyrus was used to it by now, but it was still weird. He tried to say it out loud more often, so it wouldn’t be so weird. He thought about asking Gaster why he didn’t just tell them his name back in the lab. Why he didn’t tell them _their_ names, because Toriel had said she didn’t make up those names, they already had them, even if no one used them.

But he didn’t ask about that either.

A little part of him was still afraid to know the answer.

It bothered him sometimes, having so many questions and so little answers. But it wasn’t too bad if he distracted himself. He played games with his brother, and asked Toriel to teach him new things, and did puzzles around the Ruins and made up some of his own.

And now that he had someone new to play with, distracting himself was even easier than before.

Bianca had been here for almost two weeks now, and Papyrus was already getting used to her. She was easy to get used to. She was nice, and friendly, and funny in a different way that his brother tried to be funny. She asked a lot of questions, and didn’t seem to mind when Papyrus asked her a lot of questions back. She even _answered_ the questions—most of them, anyway. She was fun to play with, and she knew a lot of games Papyrus had never heard of.

It was nice, to have someone other than his brother to play with. Not that his brother was bad to play with—Papyrus loved his brother, more than anything in the world. But Sans slept a lot and he didn’t want to play for as long as Papyrus wanted to play and sometimes they liked different games and neither of them wanted to play what the other wanted to play.

Sometimes Bianca didn’t want to play what Papyrus wanted to play either, but at least there was a better chance with two people to ask.

Papyrus had been quick to agree to her sleeping in their room. There was plenty of space once they moved the furniture around a little bit, and it only took Toriel a day to find another bed to set up next to the other wall. Sans seemed … a little unsure, but Papyrus assured him that it would be fine, and Sans seemed to believe him.

Bianca was a good roommate. She was careful to be quiet when Sans was taking a nap, but she would still play games with Papyrus so they wouldn’t get bored. She was a little messier than Papyrus, but not nearly as messy as Sans, so she helped keep the room a little cleaner. She would sit with them when Toriel came in to read them a story and help them get to sleep, and if Papyrus couldn’t sleep she would stay up and talk with him until they both got tired enough for their eyes fall shut on their own.

Once or twice, Papyrus had woken up to the sound of Bianca crying into her pillow, but when he asked her about it the next morning, she never gave him a real answer. So he tried to let it go.

He knew she wasn’t totally happy here. But she was happy enough. And … maybe that would be enough for him to work with.

Maybe, with a little more time, he could help her be happy for good.

But for now, at least she was settling in. She had a routine, and she was part of their routine. Toriel had made things special at first, not going out on any of her usual errands, as if she was afraid Bianca would disappear if she left. But she didn’t look quite as worried now, and finally, on the first day of Bianca’s third week, she told them she was going to go check on the flowerbed, like she had almost every day before Bianca arrived.

As usual, Toriel asked them to play in their room while she was gone, unless they needed to go to the kitchen for a snack. Papyrus wasn’t sure why she did that—she had been fine with them playing anywhere in the house before whatever had happened with Gaster—but he could tell the idea of them leaving worried her, so as usual, he promised that they would stay in the bedroom until she got back. Sans didn’t like people telling him what to do, but Toriel always asked very nicely and Papyrus told Sans that he didn’t want to make Toriel any more worried than she already was, so he just shrugged and said he would, too.

Bianca looked confused, and a little bit suspicious, like Sans when Toriel had first asked them not to leave their room. Papyrus thought she might say no, and thought about all the games they could play that might make staying in their room less boring.

But then she said okay, and Toriel smiled and thanked her and promised that she would be back in less than an hour, and they could make cookies when she did. Then she left.

Papyrus had pulled out a half-finished puzzle and invited Bianca to work on it, but she said no, so he worked on it with Sans instead, while Bianca sat on the bed and went back and forth between coloring, talking to them, and staring at the wall. Papyrus found himself getting into what he called the Puzzle Zone, staring hard at the pieces as he worked out which one went where, while Sans occasionally stuck a piece in with his usual careless attitude. They were almost done with this one, and if they hurried, maybe they would have it finished to show Toriel when she got back.

“Were you guys born here?”

None of them had spoken for a few minutes, so Papyrus’s head snapped up when Bianca broke the silence. He found her sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands in her lap, watching him with a tilted head and a furrowed brow.

Her expressions were funny. Funny, and interesting. She could move her face in ways he and Sans couldn’t, the skin around her eyes wrinkling and smoothing out with every little change. He still hadn’t figured out quite how to read it.

He realized she was waiting for an answer, and blinked.

“WHAT?”

“Were you born here?” she repeated, patiently.

Papyrus frowned. He looked at Sans, sitting on the other side of the puzzle. Sans gave him a long, confused look before turning to Bianca again.

“what’s ‘born’?”

This time, Bianca blinked, her forehead smoothing out in what Papyrus thought was surprise.

“Um … I … well …” She looked lost for a second. She chewed her lip, then met their eyes. “Do you guys have a mom?”

“WHAT’S A MOM?”

Bianca made a slightly frustrated face. “Is Gaster your dad?”

Papyrus paused. Then something clicked, and he perked up.

“OH! THAT’S THE WORD TORIEL USED FOR HIM A LONG TIME AGO! BUT SHE DOESN’T USE IT ANYMORE.”

Bianca’s forehead creased again. “So … he _is_ your dad?”

Papyrus looked at Sans one more time, asking for help without words. Sans hesitated, apparently searching for an answer with just as little luck as Papyrus.

“well, we lived with him before we came here.”

Bianca sat up a little straighter, her eyes wide. “You lived outside the Ruins?”

“A LONG TIME AGO!” Papyrus replied, because that, he could answer without any trouble.

“What was it like?” Bianca asked, and she sounded just as excited as Papyrus imagined he would have been before he had left the lab.

“gray,” Sans said with a shrug, looking back to the puzzle and fitting a piece into place without any obvious thought. “kinda dark, at least before the lights came on. and there wasn’t much to do.”

“BUT SOMETIMES HE TOOK US OUT FOR TESTS OR TO SIT WITH HIM AND THAT WAS MORE INTERESTING!”

Bianca stared. Then she stared longer. Then she blinked.

“… what?” she muttered. “No, I mean … what’s the outside like?”

Papyrus’s shoulders fell, just a little bit. He glanced away.

“WE NEVER WENT OUTSIDE. EXCEPT WHEN TORIEL TOOK US HERE. THEN WE SAW SOME REALLY COOL STUFF! BUT WE DIDN’T SEE IT FOR VERY LONG BECAUSE THEN WE CAME HERE AND NOW WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LEAVE.”

“Gaster never took you outside?” Bianca asked. Papyrus looked at Sans, and Sans looked at Papyrus, then they both looked at Bianca and shook their heads. “So … what, did you stay inside all the time?”

“UH-HUH!” Papyrus replied, because at least she was asking questions he knew how to answer, and he liked being able to give her answers.

Bianca stared again. She looked … shocked, like she had before, but there was something else underneath it, something Papyrus didn’t have a name for.

“That’s …” she started, before trailing off and looking down at the floor. Her hands clasped in her lap, as if she needed something to hold onto. “That’s awful.”

Papyrus frowned. He didn’t like seeing her sad. “WHY?”

Bianca shook her head, clenching her teeth.

“You’re … you’re not supposed to be stuck inside all the time. You’re supposed to be able to go outside.” She looked up again, and her forehead had an even thicker crease than before. “Was the outside really dangerous or something?”

Papyrus opened his mouth, ready to reply, then paused. He blinked. He looked at Sans, then to Bianca again.

“I … I DON’T KNOW.”

Bianca frowned, and her eyes flicked toward the door, toward where Gaster probably was. “Well, he doesn’t sound like a very good parent.”

Papyrus tilted his head. “WHAT’S A PARENT?”

Bianca gave him another surprised look, though not as surprised as before. Like she was getting used to being surprised and so the actual surprise was beginning to wear off.

“A parent is … an adult. Who takes care of you. Usually they helped make you, but not always.”

“OH!” Papyrus perked up again, eyes wide and a little excited. “GASTER MADE US! SO DOES THAT MAKE HIM OUR PARENT?”

“Maybe,” Bianca murmured, without looking at him. She was frowning. “But sometimes kids’ real parents aren’t any good, so they don’t live with them. I … guess they’re still their parents, but …”

She shrugged, like she wasn’t sure herself. She let half a minute pass in silence before she looked up again.

“Was it just Gaster before? No one else? Did you have another parent?”

“nope,” Sans said. He was looking at the puzzle again. Papyrus wondered if he wasn’t interested in the conversation, or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about this. “it was just him and us.”

Bianca looked … thoughtful? Papyrus was pretty sure that was right. She was still frowning, and she looked unhappy. He thought that if Gaster was in the room, she would be giving him a nasty look.

“Maybe that’s why Toriel is mad at him.”

Papyrus almost said that Toriel wasn’t mad at Gaster, but he stopped. He knew it wasn’t true.

Toriel didn’t yell at Gaster, or say mean things to him, or do a lot of the things that Papyrus thought someone would do if they were mad at someone else. But he knew Toriel well enough to know when she was mad, even if it wasn’t obvious.

Maybe she wasn’t really _really_ mad at Gaster, but … she wasn’t happy with him. Papyrus wasn’t sure she had been happy with him at all, not since the thing that changed things.

Sometimes Gaster would do something and Toriel would give him a sharp look, or pull him aside to talk to him, or just tell him, in a voice that was somehow hard and gentle at the same time, that what he did or said wasn’t okay, and she wouldn’t let him do it again.

A lot of the time, it was something that Gaster had done before. Many times before. Something that Papyrus thought was normal, because it had always been that way.

Maybe Toriel had different ideas about what was normal than most people.

Or maybe Gaster wasn’t most people.

Toriel had told them that a few times. That the way Gaster treated them wasn’t how most people would treat them. That it wasn’t normal to keep children in an empty room and only take them out for tests. It wasn’t normal to give them gowns instead of regular clothes. It wasn’t normal to not give them toys or books with pictures. It wasn’t normal to give them a bench instead of a bed.

It wasn’t normal not to give them hugs.

Papyrus didn’t think Toriel was lying. But … it hurt, just a little, to know that that was what other children got, and Gaster had never given it to them.

“WHAT IS YOUR PARENT LIKE, BIANCA?” he asked, before he had time to think about it.

Bianca blinked. She stared at him for a long second before looking away.

“Uh … well, I have two of them. Two moms,” she started. Something in her face softened. “They’re … they’re great.”

Papyrus waited, watching with eager eyes, and a few seconds later she glanced back to him, just long enough to see his expression before she turned away again.

“They’re always nice to me, even when I’m in a bad mood. They throw me really big birthday parties even when we can’t afford to have something fancy. They _make_ it fancy even without the money.”

Her mouth twitched up at the corners.

“They take me fun places for vacation, and … they listen to me when I’m upset,” she went on. “They defend me when other people are mean to me. Kids or … teachers. They always take my side. Always.”

Her voice was quiet now, and Papyrus got the feeling that she was talking to herself more than she was talking to him. Her eyes shimmered, just a little.

“They say that hugs should always be free, no matter what. I can have as many hugs as I want. That there’s nothing I could do that could make me stop deserving hugs. Or love.”

She swallowed, very hard, like there was something in her throat. Her head hung low, and her hands clenched so tight that Papyrus wondered if it hurt.

“I miss them.”

Her breath hitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight. Papyrus’s hands itched to reach out and hug her, comfort her, just like he would his brother. She was … a little like a brother now, wasn’t she? Only she wasn’t a boy, and Toriel had told them once that the word brothers was only for boys. So she was a girl-brother. And he hated to see his girl-brother so sad.

But just as he started to get to his feet, she opened her eyes again, wiping them with her arm, before she pushed herself off the bed, got down on the floor, and helped them work on the puzzle.

They didn’t talk about parents for the rest of the day, even after Toriel got back. Papyrus didn’t want to make Bianca sad. She was happy a lot of the time, if they didn’t talk about things that made her sad. So they played her favorite games and helped Toriel make cookies and then make dinner and she showed him her cowgirl hat and tried to explain what a cowgirl was even though he didn’t really understand. And she smiled and looked happy again, and Papyrus was happy, and Sans looked pretty happy, too.

But Papyrus didn’t miss the hard looks Bianca gave Gaster when she thought he wasn’t looking.

Gaster didn’t see the looks. He always tried very hard not to look at Bianca, at least when she was looking at him. He watched her sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, as if he thought she was going to do something bad. Like he didn’t want her to be there, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Like he knew it wouldn’t make a difference.

Papyrus still hoped that one day, Bianca and Gaster could be friends, but he knew that it wouldn’t happen for a long time.

The things she said kept echoing in his head, even after Toriel read them a bedtime story and tucked them in, even after she turned off the light and closed the door, even after he heard Bianca’s breathing even out on the other side of the room. He thought about what she had said about her moms, how she had called Gaster their dad, what she had said about parents and how Gaster wasn’t a very good one.

He thought about it, and his thoughts drifted around from one thing to another until it became very clear that his thoughts weren’t going to let him sleep.

“SANS?” he asked at last, in their old language, even though he was already whispering. It felt weird to speak in their old language now, but it was … nice, in a funny way. Familiar. It always came out easily, no matter how long he went without using it.

Sans lifted his head from where it rested against his chest, just enough to meet Papyrus’s eyes and blink a few times.

“mm?”

He looked tired. Half-asleep, even, and Papyrus wondered if this was the best time to ask this. Maybe he should wait. Maybe it would be better if he asked about this tomorrow. Maybe …

Sans blinked up at him, and Papyrus swallowed the lump growing in his throat.

“ARE WE PEOPLE?”

The words broke into the silence like pebbles plopping into still water, like the pebbles he and Sans had dropped into a little puddle they found one day while exploring the Ruins. Sans blinked again, and again, and with each blink his eyelights grew a little brighter, a little clearer, until he was fully awake, staring with an expression Papyrus had almost figured out how to read. Then Sans looked away.

Papyrus waited, giving him a few seconds to think, but Sans didn’t respond. Papyrus fidgeted.

“SANS?”

“why do you ask, bro?” Sans asked, without looking back up.

Papyrus tried to focus on the weight of his brother against him, familiar and warm. He tried to focus on the softness of the bed underneath them, the blankets, the pillows. The little nightlight in the corner. Bianca’s soft breathing on the other side of the room.

He fidgeted some more.

“IF GASTER IS OUR PARENT … AND … AND HE DIDN’T DO WHAT BIANCA’S PARENTS DID … IS IT BECAUSE OF US?” he managed at last, the words feeling uncomfortable as they slipped out of his throat. “ARE WE … NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO GET THAT KIND OF STUFF?”

He could feel Sans turning his head to look at him, but by the time Papyrus moved to meet his eyes, Sans had looked away again.

“toriel does that stuff with us,” he muttered.

“YES, BUT … TORIEL IS NICE TO EVERYONE,” Papyrus replied. Something in his chest felt like it was sinking. “MAYBE SHE DOESN’T CARE IF WE’RE PEOPLE OR THINGS. MAYBE … MAYBE GASTER DOES CARE.”

Sans stiffened in his hold, and Papyrus held him a little tighter, even as his own mouth tilted further into a frown.

“MAYBE HE WOULD ONLY DO THAT NICE STUFF TO PEOPLE. NOT TO THINGS.”

He paused, and the words hung there in the air like … like … Papyrus didn’t know what. Something heavy. Something cold and uncomfortable but far too familiar, and far too obvious, to ignore.

Sans pressed a little closer, his forehead resting against Papyrus’s collarbone like a pillow.

“if he wanted people … he would’ve made people. i don’t think he wanted people.”

Sans’s voice was low and pained and sounded much, much older than it usually did. Sans did that sometimes, did things or said things that made him seem older. Papyrus didn’t think he did it on purpose, and he didn’t do it very much. It was like there was a part of Sans that had aged faster than the rest of him. A part that understood things the rest of him didn’t understand, things that the people around him didn’t think he should understand. A part that didn’t let him ignore things that he would much rather ignore.

The part that made him think too much about things that made him sad.

Papyrus didn’t think that part of his brother was very nice, and usually he would tell it that it was wrong. But right now it felt like that part had slipped into him, too, and was whispering things to him that he didn’t like at all, and he didn’t want to believe, but no matter how much he told it that it was wrong and it needed to stop and leave him and his brother alone, it kept talking.

And suddenly Papyrus understood why it sometimes took Sans so long to believe him.

“SO … WE’RE NOT PEOPLE?” he asked, as much as he didn’t want to. His voice shook, just a little, and it was far quieter than he knew it could be. “IS IT OUR FAULT? WHAT HE DID TO US?”

Sans pressed closer still, and Papyrus clung to him, just loosely enough so he wouldn’t hurt him. It felt, suddenly, like he was the only stable thing in the world.

“we didn’t decide to be made this way,” Sans murmured, something that sounded like anger tinging his voice. “he made us how he wanted us.”

“BUT IS IT OUR FAULT?” Papyrus pressed, a little louder this time, and he could feel something building inside him, like it was about to explode, tense and uncomfortable and far too full and he didn’t like it he didn’t want it there but he didn’t know how to make it go away and—“SANS?”

Sans didn’t reply at first, and Papyrus came very close to actually nudging him to get him to say something. Finally, he let out a long, heavy breath and shook his head, his skull brushing against Papyrus’s collarbone through the soft material of his handmade pajamas.

“i dunno.”

Papyrus froze for a second, just a second, before the words sunk in, and it felt like the thing growing inside him was about to explode.

But before it could, he sat up, threw the covers off his legs, and climbed over his brother, off the bed.

“bro? papyrus?” Sans called after him, even as Papyrus started across the room toward the door. “where are you going?”

His voice had always been quiet, and it was even more so now, when he was trying not to wake Bianca, but even still, Papyrus had no trouble making it out. He didn’t turn around.

“IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GIVE ME AN ANSWER, THEN I WILL ASK SOMEONE ELSE!”

The bed squeaked a bit as someone moved on top of it. “papyrus, wait!”

Papyrus could hear Sans’s footsteps padding along behind him, but he still didn’t turn around. He opened their door just slow enough so that the hinges wouldn’t creak, then slipped out into the hall and started along it, toward the next bedroom door.

It had been a while since he had gone to sleep in Toriel’s bed. He had done it a lot when they first came here—they had both done it a lot back then. It was … nice, in a way he had never imagined it could be. He could hardly remember sleeping without his brother, and sleeping with Toriel … was like all the good things about sleeping with his brother doubled, plus Toriel was warm and really soft and even better than the nice soft pillows Papyrus got to sleep on every night now. Plus, if he or his brother had a nightmare, Toriel was always right there to stroke their skulls and hug them and give them little kisses and tell them that everything was alright. It was very, very hard to keep having bad dreams when Toriel was nearby.

They had never really _decided_ to stop going to her room, and she had certainly never told them they couldn’t. They had just found themselves falling asleep more easily and not waking up at night. They knew they were welcome, if they needed her. But for the past couple of months, they had been alright.

But now, Papyrus found his feet carrying him into her room just as they had all those other nights, Sans trailing along behind him as he turned the doorknob and pushed open the door with practiced silence. He had gotten very, very good at opening the door without making any noise, never wanting to wake Toriel when they went to climb into her bed.

But Toriel always seemed to know when something was wrong, and she had said once that she could never sleep soundly if she knew one of them was in distress.

Or maybe, just maybe, Papyrus had wanted her attention, and not opened the door quite as quietly as usual.

Either way, by the time the door was open enough for them to sleep inside, he could already hear the mattress creaking as Toriel sat up in bed.

“Children?” she asked, her voice faint and groggy with sleep, but no less concerned than it always was when they showed up in the middle of the night. “What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you alright?”

Something deep inside Papyrus began to loosen, just a bit, just at the sound of her voice. Toriel was here. She would figure this out. She would know the answer. She would make that voice whispering in his head leave him alone.

Sans sighed and fidgeted at his side, and Papyrus could feel his eyes glancing between Toriel and him.

“we’re … we’re okay, toriel, it’s just—”

“ARE WE PEOPLE?”

Papyrus didn’t even think about the words before they left his mouth. They just … fell out, like they had been building up inside him, like they _were_ that weight and pressure in his chest and even as they hung in the air, making two sets of eyes lock on him, wide and worried, he swore he could feel his shoulders slumping in relief that they were finally out.

Then Toriel stood up from the bed, crossing the room to stand in front of them, and Papyrus was reminded of exactly what he had said.

“… I’m sorry?” Toriel asked after a long, long pause, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what she wanted to say.

Papyrus dropped his head to stare at the floor, clutching the hem of his pajama shirt and fidgeting.

“ARE WE PEOPLE?” he asked again, very quietly, but clearly enough that he wouldn’t have to repeat it. “LIKE YOU AND BIANCA AND GASTER?”

He thought it would feel good to get it out. To say it. To ask it. He thought it would be a relief.

But the second the words are out, he felt like he was going to fall over from fear.

Because now that he asked the question, he had to hear the answer.

Toriel was silent for what felt like a long, long time. Such a long time that Papyrus could feel the pressure building up in his chest again, stronger this time, heavier, colder, like a block of ice where his soul is supposed to be. She looked … upset. Not upset at him, he was almost sure about that. But he still didn’t like it when she looked upset. He wanted to make it better, but he didn’t know how, and he felt lost and scared and he wished she would say something because the silence hurt more than he thought anything could.

“… my children, why would you ask such a thing?” she breathed, the words falling out of her mouth like a reflex, even as she shook her head. “Of course you are people.”

“REALLY?” Papyrus asked, a little more desperately, a little louder than he had intended, his eyes wide and his chest still tight. “WE’RE NOT JUST THINGS?”

“ _Things?_ ” Toriel’s eyes went wider than Papyrus thought they could, and she dropped down to her knees in front of them, so she was a little less tall. “What … why would …”

There was something hard in her eyes, growing behind the softness. Papyrus swallowed and opened his mouth, but no words came out. He tried again. Still nothing.

Then Sans sighed, and Papyrus turned to find his brother staring at the floor.

“he told us we were things. not people.”

Toriel froze. Her whole body went stiff, her lips pressed tight together, a tiny crease in the center of her brow. Papyrus swallowed again. He knew she wasn’t angry at them, but that didn’t change the fact that she was angry, and Papyrus didn’t like it when Toriel was angry.

“He … is he awake?” she asked, and he could hear her trying very hard not to sound upset. She didn’t hide it very well. She glanced over their shoulders, toward the hall. “Did he go into your room? When did he—”

“back at the lab,” Sans said, just as Toriel looked like she was about to stand up. “he hasn’t said it here.”

Toriel’s shoulders sunk in something like relief, but some of the tension remained, and even in the dark, Papyrus could still see the fury burning in her eyes.

He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at Gaster later.

He knew there was no point in trying to tell her not to be mad at all.

After a long pause, she sighed and brought a hand to her eyes, dragging it down over her face before it fell off her chin and hung at her side again. Then she took a deep breath and looked back to them, eyes drifting between them, softer and softer the longer she looked at them.

Finally, she reached out her hands and rested one on each of their shoulders, gentle and firm all at once, like a rock keeping a paper from flying away in the wind.

“You are people,” she said, like it was the most important thing in the world. “Never doubt that. You are just as real and precious as any other person in the world. It doesn’t matter what he said to you. You are the world to me, and I love you more than I can say.”

Papyrus blinked. Then he blinked again. The words echoed around his head like a bouncy ball dropped into his skull, and each them they bounced, he felt his chest grow tight and warm.

“YOU LOVE US?”

Toriel stared. Then her eyes softened further, and she gave their shoulders a soft squeeze. “Yes. Of course I love you.”

Papyrus felt a lump in his throat. It was weird and he had to work to breathe around it but it wasn’t bad, it felt weird but it wasn’t bad at all and even though he didn’t know what it was he didn’t want it to go away. He swallowed again, a little harder around the lump, and felt himself smile without even having to try.

“I LOVE YOU TOO!”

Toriel smiled, and it was a beautiful smile, the best smile Papyrus had ever seen.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” she said, very gently, and even if a part of her was still mad, that part was very far away. She turned to Sans, and her smile fell, her head tilting in concern. “Sans? What’s wrong, dear?”

Papyrus looked and found Sans’s whole expression tight, his eyelights wider than Papyrus had ever seen them, his smile shaking just a little, like it was trying to make itself wider.

“… nothing,” he murmured, and his voice shook like his smile, quiet and a little choked and Papyrus wondered if the same lump had showed up in his brother’s throat. He paused a second before his smile settled, smaller, but somehow as happy as it had ever been. “i love you, too.”

Toriel’s smile widened, her expression even softer than before.

Then, without warning, she scooped them both up into one of the tightest hugs Papyrus had felt in his life.

It was warm and comfortable and soft and he could feel her soul thrumming beneath her skin and all he could do was cling to her and press his face into her robes. Her arms pressed him so close it almost hurt, and he could feel Sans snuggling in at his side, holding on just as tight.

He wondered how he had lived without these hugs for so long, and he hoped, with every ounce of his being, that he would never have to live without them again.

He didn’t know how long they stayed there, cuddled in her arms, before he felt her move. He thought, for a second, that she was taking them back to their room, but then, before a door had opened or she had walked very far at all, he felt himself being settled against a mattress far larger and warmer and well-worn than his own. Then Toriel laid down next to him, and he could feel Sans on her other side, his soul bright and happy and smiling just like the smile Papyrus knew would be on his face.

She held them again, one arm around each of them, settling them right against her side, cushioned between her furry arms and the fabric of her nightgown. Papyrus pressed his face into the cloth, breathing in the warmth and the familiar scent, and felt the last of the tension in his body slip away.

Maybe Gaster hadn’t been a very good dad. Maybe … maybe he never would be.

But Bianca said that she had had two moms. Two very good moms, who took care of her and did nice things and tried so hard to make her happy. Who loved her.

Toriel loved them.

So even if they didn’t have a very good dad … Papyrus thought Toriel would make a very, very good mom.


End file.
